Over the last month, I have had numerous conversations with people about Twitter. Most of these are with experienced users, and the conversation tends to be around the web interface and their commercialisation model.
Over the last week or two some users (me included) are seeing a new interface, with some minor changes to the main top right nav and a couple of links around your avatar. Many of the people I have spoken to wonder why Twitter has such a ‘simple’ interface and haven’t done more to improve it.
The best place to start is with Twitters early days. Those of us that have used Twitter for a while remember the regular ‘Fail Whales’ and the constant tech problems the service had. When Twitter had an outage, it was for a lengthy period of time. From 30 minutes to many hours and was very regular. The Fail Whale’s popularity grew from their unique way of handling their problems and all manners of merchandise and discussion has come from it.
Looking back at how they handled this probably colours how I see their interface and lack of change. And as a prelude to my conclusions – hat tip to them for it! Twitter had to re-adapt to the ever-growing load on its systems and make some changes to its infrastructure and capabilities.
As a technical person, who understands the issues with high loads and delivery performances, I admire how quickly they have sorted this problem. While the Whale and the armless robot make occasional appearances, the load now is quantifiably bigger and growing every single day by quite phenomenal numbers. My take on what they have been doing is concentrating almost exclusively on ensuring the underlying architecture is solid and responsive.
Ireckon they have done that very well. Time will tell how it handles a long-term explosion of popular usage.
Think then why have they not added features and functionality to the main Twitter website.
Why should they? There are a plethora of application developers doing all the market research and development they want. Every platform has a multitude of applications for Twitter, including straight usage, extensions and statistical counters. If I were them I would be doing little development on interface, I would quietly watch all the great development being done and then cherry pick what I need to when needed.
Keep in mind that their API handles a large amount of traffic for them and load. I would suggest the API is much easier to develop around and control than a web page. Less load to manage, very controllable, i.e. there are API rules of use, which means you lose access if you over use it; something they cannot do easily on the web, although at times the site does it itself.
The community has created a range of uses and terms like Retweets (RT) , none created by Twitter itself, all the while running across the one platform. Twitter is to a degree much like Telstra is here in Australia; the backbone of a very large network, able to manage capacity and functionality when it needs to rather than being totally controlled by the users.
Due to its prominence, growth, and first mover advantage Twitter does not have to provide an awesome user interface and experience. It is (the twitter interface) in effect the opposite of Web 2.0 and supposed advances in clean and quality user interfaces or perhaps due to its simplicity, it is a much better example.
I see absolutely no reason why a RT button could not be added to any tweet on the Twitter website. Therefore, in my mind there is a very GOOD reason why not. They also know there are so many different tastes out here, why try to cater to them all?
I think they are quite cleverly sitting back and watching. The cagey Twitter Cat knows it can catch the bird anytime it likes, but it wants to make sure it doesn’t show its hand too early. By letting the little birdie feel safe, it is hoping many more birds will come to play, and then it can have its pick of a smorgasbord.
As for that old Commercialisation chestnut, well imagine forcing a whole audience of millions onto individual applications that appeal to your own senses. They are building their field of dreams, but creating a limited number of actual customers. If you had 2 million + people using your Twitter app and then suddenly Twitter goes to a charged API model I wonder if you will be squeezed nicely into helping them commercialise their product.
Kind of fits into the old manufacturer / distributor model to some degree. It definitely is akin to the Telco model of providing the infrastructure and allowing many resellers to flog your wares, all the while controlling the network and setting the conditions of play.
There are many ways this could play out. They have made some small but useful changes, to the Twitter website for some users. Time will tell what they really are planning to do, and with Facebook and others making more deliberate plays at the short form messaging / micro blogging, it might prompt some quicker evolution.
In the meantime, I am still convinced they are doing it by design not by lack of it.
Well that’s what ireckon anyway!
follow me @ireckon
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