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58 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
58 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: Things Twitter Should Do Better
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date: 2016-01-14
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---
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#### Just some notes...
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Twitter is going downhill (in my opinion). Since Jack
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Dorsey became CEO (again), there have been some... *interesting*
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additions. The number one, most useless thing they wasted their time on
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is **Twitter Moments**. Moments is basically a summary of media the
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people who follow have tweeted. I'd like to see some stats on how many
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people use it, and how many of those people clicked it either by
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accident or out of idle curiosity. I don't think it's something Twitter
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should have spent time developing -- perhaps their time would have been
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better spent improving their existing things, like making the Twitter
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mobile app more consistent or streamlining Twitter for Web -- or hell,
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even making TweetDeck nicer to use.
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The official Twitter app for Android (not sure about iOS) is a mess. The
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most prominent issue I have is the fact that the top navigation bar will
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change what icons it has where, either when I switch between accounts or
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just restart the app. Their bottom nav is terrible too -- it will cycle
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between a clunky floating action button, a bar with a faux-text input
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and camera icon, and a three-section bar consisting of a new tweet,
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camera, and gallery icons. What is this? Why on Earth do we need three
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different nav styles -- that it *cycles between?!* I want to know both
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how and why this decision was made, if it can count as a decision.
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I think the worst part of this whole Twitter app debacle is that they
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have people at Twitter who know how to do Twitter apps. The creator of
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[Falcon Pro](http://getfalcon.pro/)
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works at Twitter, and I consider his app an absolutely amazing Twitter
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experience. So how why is the experience so terrible? And why are they
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focusing on new things like an edit button (rumored), 10,000 character
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tweets (again, rumored), and **bloody Twitter Moments**.
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#### So, Mr. Jack Dorsey, how could you make Twitter decent again?
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First, take a step back. Remember what you envisioned Twitter being. No,
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not a text-only messaging system, that's a terrible idea, and remember
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how much debt Twitter was in after that. No, rather, take a step back
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and simplify. Cut out the 'features' you think are fantastic. Make it a
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140-character microblogging platform. Cut out anything that you can see
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any reason to have. Open up your API more and let devs work on what they
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want to. Why? Because people want and have freedom of choice. If they
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don't want to use the official Twitter app, fine. Let them use an
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unofficial one, an unofficial one that has actual access to something
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resembling an API, not extremely basic functions. And fix your own
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official apps, so people are actually tempted to use them. Keep the
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140-character limit, because it's a gimmick that worked. Return Likes to
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Favorites, because you're not Facebook, as much as you want to work
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there. Maybe fix up Tweetdeck so it's a little nicer to use, modernize
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the UI and make it flow. Promote the Falcon Pro author to a position
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where he can make some UI/UX suggestions and actually get heard.
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And above all, *please don't kill the blue bird.*
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