AllThingsD » Twitter.com

Easier Navigating at Tweaked Twitter

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 00:07:30 +0000

Twitter recently revealed the most dramatic overhaul to its website since the social network’s debut four years ago. Some tech-savvy Twitterers who use apps like TweetDeck scoff at the idea of tweeting via the original site. But the newly enhanced Twitter.com may change their minds.

[ See post to watch video ]

I, too, have long viewed Twitter.com as much less robust and useful than third-party apps. So I was surprised to find that the new site offers a good number of fresh features that enhance the social-network experience. The site now works a lot like its own app, with fewer clicks needed to navigate and more ways to see content without leaving the current Web page. The site is noticeably faster with more pleasing visuals and easier ways to follow or unfollow others.

According to the company, 78 percent of Twitter users use Twitter.com at least part of the time and about half of all Twitterers use only the website.

But many people who use third-party apps will keep using them because Twitter.com still doesn’t provide a way for users to shorten long URLs in tweets before posting them, nor does it provide a simple way to insert photos or videos into outgoing tweets. It also lacks the ability to pull in content from other social networks, like some third-party apps do with LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace. And its method for retweeting doesn’t let you add your own comment to the tweet you’re retweeting, or reposting to your followers.

Not everyone can use this website yet. Twitter is slowly rolling this out over a period of weeks, so just under half of the 160 million people who use Twitter can currently access it. A spokesman for Twitter says all users should have access within the next two weeks.

This website was redesigned so as to give people a more efficient way to get information on Twitter. One of the ways it does this is by using a details pane, or a column that slides out on the right side of the page to show more information about something you’ve selected. The details pane helps users avoid going to an entirely new Web page for the information.

If I click on someone’s profile photo, a details pane opens and shows me a mini profile of that person. Likewise, if I click on a tweet, a details pane shows me information about that tweet, like usernames mentioned in it; other tweets that mention the original user; and who retweeted the tweet. Small icons beside tweets indicate that a tweet contains a photo, video or location tag; clicking on these icons will open the image, play a video or display a location map.

You can use a details pane to see conversations around tweets, something that wasn’t possible on Twitter.com before. A small word bubble icon beside a tweet indicates that at least one person replied to the tweet, and the details pane shows the conversation associated with that tweet.

At the revamped Twitter.com, a details pane pops out to the right of a tweet to allow a user to play a shared video without leaving the Web page.

Helpful tabs appear at the top of the Twitter.com home page for quick navigation to a section of the site. These tabs are labeled Timeline, @Mentions, Retweets, Searches and Lists. The Retweets are broken down into retweets by others; retweets by you; and your tweets that were retweeted. Searches include terms you search most often and save for a fast check of that term. And Lists includes any Twitter lists you follow.

A Messages section at the top of Twitter.com lists all direct messages or DMs, as they’re called in Twitter lingo. This is incredibly helpful if you use direct messages to exchange several back-and-forth tweets with someone and want a simple way to keep track of those messages. The Messages section also uses a details pane: When a tweet is selected on the left, a details pane opens on the right to display the whole conversation string. And a number beside each tweet indicates how many back-and-forth tweets were exchanged.

The new Twitter.com constantly checks for new tweets and indicates the number of new tweets posted since you last checked the page. This number appears at the top of the timeline, as well as beside the Web page name in the frame of the browser window. But the page doesn’t automatically refresh to show those new tweets. A Twitter spokesman said the engineers made a deliberate decision not to refresh the screen without users doing it so they wouldn’t lose their place in the timeline or feel out of control.

To see a set of keyboard shortcuts for the home page, just hit the question mark key anytime. These shortcuts include hitting the period key to refresh a timeline of tweets and jump to the top of the screen; hitting the “g” and “u” keys opens a floating box into which you can type someone’s name to search for a Twitter profile.

Search now offers ways to narrow your results according to tweets, tweets with links, tweets near you or people. But I found that while it is better, searching on Twitter.com still needs more improvement. When I searched for a friend’s dad on Twitter, I saw a huge list of results that matched his first name, but not his first and last name, which I had entered. I even tried putting his entire name in quotation marks, but it didn’t help.

In early August, the Twitter.com site began suggesting people who you might want to follow, and these suggestions carry over into the new site with four suggested names. Several factors determine these suggestions, including who you follow and who those people follow. In the future, these suggestions will also take into consideration the tweets you choose to retweet to others. In my experience, Twitter’s suggestions exposed me to some people that made a lot of sense for me to follow, including popular Twitterers as well as some who weren’t so popular.

Twitter.com now uses infinite scroll, or the ability to let you scroll down limitlessly without having to click a “More” option to see additional tweets in a timeline or names of followers, depending on what you’re reading. Again, this helps people click less on the page, and saves time by keeping them from opening a new Web page.

The revamped Twitter.com offers richer features and makes it much easier to navigate through the social network and its sea of tweets. But certain features, like better searches and ways to shorten URLs in tweets, are necessary if Twitter wants to keep its users on this site.

Email Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Twitter Guys: We'll Still Be Running This Company in Five Years

Peter Kafka — Wed, 27 May 2009 01:49:55 +0000

Meet the Internet’s It Boys: Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone. A year ago their “micromessaging” platform was unknown outside of a small circle of digerati. Now the service has broken through to the mainstream, or at least to the mainstream media (thanks, Oprah!). But while Twitter has no problem generating attention, it’s still unclear how the company will actually generate revenue. Or maybe it doesn’t need to do that: Last year Facebook offered to buy Twitter for $500 million in cash and stock, and the service could presumably garner a much higher price today–perhaps from Microsoft (MSFT) or Google (GOOG). Or at least that’s what its investors may be hoping for.

Session Highlights

[ See post to watch video ]

Live Blog

After Kara Swisher assists Jill Sobule with a song penned for (and about) Rupert Murdoch, Walt Mossberg joins her on the stage and they thank the audience. “We double-mean it this year,” says Walt.
Walt and Kara explain their “Web 3.0″ thesis, which you can find explained in detail here. They also plug the new All Things Digital iphone app (which is excellent!) and run through a series of less helpful iPhone apps–less helpful because they don’t exist. The Carol Bartz app gets some applause.
Walt: It’s all about apps. Apple (AAPL) dominates that business but we will show some other great stuff at this conference. Kara: Normally we start out with big-company CEOs, but instead, we’re going to bring out the company that everyone is talking about. Here are Biz Stone and Evan Williams of Twitter.
Kara shows off a video that depicts her mother’s low opinion of Twitter. Well worth watching.
Walt: We also have real data about people’s opinions re: digital media, commissioned by an actual polling firm–Penn, Schoen & Berland. For instance, only 51 percent of Twitter users are on the service once a month. What’s the deal with that?

Evan: That’s fair. We know it’s in its infancy. There are lots of ways to fix the adoption curve that we know how to do.
Evan explains the history of Twitter. He sold Blogger to Google, hired Biz, started Odeo, a podcasting company. Walt: “Which got crushed by Apple.”
Biz: I followed Evan to Odeo, and we started working with Jack Dorsey, who had this idea that just involved IM-like status updates that could update via mobile. To Ev’s credit, as CEO of Odeo, he sent us off to work on that.
Evan: A few months later, at Odeo, we just didn’t see a bright future for that. Generally, if I’m not personally invested in the product, and don’t use it myself…
Biz: I started playing with Twitter and I started laughing at Evan’s posts and thought that was a good sign.

Evan: It was so simple. “It didn’t look like a real thing. The simplicity turned off some of our engineers. It wasn’t obvious at all.
Walt: How many users do you have? Biz and Ev won’t comment.
Evan: We wound down Odeo, returned the money to investors and made them whole and went off to focus on Twitter.
Walt points out that most users don’t use the Twitter.com interface. Biz: We have at least twice as much usage via the open API and other clients as we do via Twitter.com.
Walt: Is that good thing? Evan: Yes. Very much so. We’ve never built an iPhone app, but there are at least a dozen of them. You can’t win by trying to corral everything in. We have all these people adding value. We can’t build all the stuff people want with 45 people.

Biz: Openness, open platforms are a big deal. We’re seeing lots of this. And people communicating on these open platforms is a big deal. It’s not just with communication. It’s with open-source software, transparency at companies, etc. People are building a ton of value this way.
Evan: This openness helped create Summize, the search engine we bought a year ago. That couldn’t have happened if we weren’t open with our data. Turns out there’s a huge opportunity with search, and we hadn’t foreseen that.
Walt: Will future projects and developments happen on Web pages or on clients/apps?
Evan: We’re interface-agnostic. We’re more concerned about what the data is and that it should flow to all clients. I don’t think we’ll build a desktop app, but we will tweak the Web site a bit.
Kara: Everyone’s talking about real-time search. But what kind of real business opportunity is available there?
Evan: Real-time search means different things on different platforms. On Google, it’s Web search. On Twitter, it’s Twitter search. It’s different from what other people are talking about when they’re talking about real-time search. One of Twitter’s properties is that it’s low-latency, and speed is important in information dissemination.
Kara: So what’s the value in that? What’s the advertising premise for that?
Biz: When I think about search, I think about a box and a button. When I think about Twitter, I zoom out a bit, and I think of discovery.

Walt: Is there a way to sell that?
Biz: Pfft….There’s a way to make introductions to people, to tell them that things and people are available on Twitter, and there’s certainly money in that.
Walt cites another piece of polling data: 30 percent say they’d be willing to see banner advertising on Twitter. Does that work for you guys?
Evan: I think it’s probably the least interesting thing we can do.
Kara: So you’re least interested in doing it?
Evan: Yeah.
Walt: 24 percent say they’d pay for power accounts. Do you think that’s a good idea?
Evan: Yes, I think it’s a good idea. We’ve talked about it for a long time. Here’s how it might work: Lots of commercial users are on Twitter already. That’s not odd, and it’s happening successfully already. But we could give those users tools to make it better. For instance, here’s how P&G (PG) might sell Tide…Wait that’s a bad idea. How about The Wall Street Journal? No, they’re a media company; that won’t work either. How about Dunkin’ Donuts? People like Dunkin’ Donuts. They have an affinity for that, and they’re already following Dunkin’ Donuts. So one thing we can do is tell new users that the Dunkin’ Donuts account on Twitter is actually Dunkin’ Donuts. To verify that.
Walt: OK, what else could you do with that?

Evan: There’s a million ways, if you’re doing this in real time, to make this useful, and it won’t be annoying to people because if they don’t want that information, they won’t subscribe to a particular account.
Biz on hype: We realize that this constant stream of attention will eventually go away. We have to keep concentrating on the company. “We’re one percent into Twitter.”
Kara: You’ve raised a lot of money. You’ve had a lot of interest from acquirers. Why didn’t you sell to Facebook?
Evan: I have a big thing about building sustainable companies. And I think that’s what Twitter should be.
Walt: So in five years you won’t have sold this? You’ll still be running it?
Evan: Yes. I didn’t expect to be working on this when I spun Twitter out of Odeo. But I came back to it because it was the most interesting thing I could work on.
Kara: Do you have Zuckerberg-like control of your company, where you have the ability to control your fate and turn down a $1 billion offer from the likes of Microsoft?
Evan. Yes. And the board feels the same way.
Walt: You sure your board doesn’t want to sell the company within five years?
Evan: Sequoia likes to brag about YouTube. But they also aspire to start companies like Apple and other cool companies. I think VCs like to brag about starting big awesome companies.
Biz: When we met Bijan Sabet at Spark, I remember telling Ev that I liked him a lot. And Ev met him and said “he’s a little too nice.” Then we met the rest of the guys. [Pause]. And then we were in.
Kara: What’s next big delta for you, the next big innovation?
Evan. We’re not doing a TV show. We look at that like an iPhone platform that can have apps on it, but we’re not doing a show ourselves.
Biz: I think the next big thing is scaling this company.
Evan: Definitely scaling the company. We’re 45 people. We need to make the product better, we need to solve the awareness-to-engagement ramp. We also want to deepen the value proposition. There are lots of head-slapping things we can do to improve the product.
Walt: I was Twitter skeptic. But I really go into it when my colleague Katie told me that this was an interesting way to keep up with news. Is that something you can build on?
Evan: That’s the big secret for people like Kara’s mom, and we can do a better job of explaining that. Twitter disseminates information and it builds relationships. You can do one or both of those things.
Kara: Do you need to raise more money?
Evan: Well, we need to start building a monetizable business.
Kara: When does that begin?
Evan: There will be a moment when we turn something on.

Time for Q&A: Roger McNamee from Elevation Partners begs the guys not to do midday planned maintenance outages. He also asks them to scale faster and to hire more than 45 people.
Evan: Go to Twitter.com, and you’ll see that we’re hiring. We’re not planning on staying at 45 people.
Q: What do you think will be key way you bring in money in a couple of years?
Biz: You need to leave room for emergence to take place. We’re doing that in the way we structure the company and the way we hire people, etc. I’ve always said that if we described Twitter in three sentences, the first two would be about not putting too much fidelity on it, and the last sentence would be “we don’t know.”
Q: What about an Apple-like App Store for Twitter, where you guys could sort and authenticate apps?
Biz: I think exposing apps to people would be a good idea. I don’t know about charging for it. We know that certain apps make Twitter work much better for people, and we should promote them and point people to them. “I would like to do that right now. I don’t know how soon we’ll get to it.”
Q: Not really a question, but a plea to not abuse the access to personal data that Twitter already has.
Evan: We know not kill the goose. There are things that we could do that would be really stupid, and that would be dangerous, but those aren’t even the most tempting things to do.
Q: In traditional media and marketing, we have tools to prove the value of different tools. How to tell marketing clients that they’re reaching the right audience, etc.?
Biz: Start by typing their name in Twitter search and showing them how many people are talking about their product. They’ll immediately want to respond. That’s the easy answer.
Q: What about looking at Nielsen-like partners to help refine metrics and tell marketers who’s looking at what?
Biz: There are lots of interesting things we could do. I think that it will be more compelling when you’re not just following a set list of people. Twitter will be more interesting when it starts telling you things like “You go to Whole Foods a lot…maybe you’d like to know that this is on sale today, etc.”
Evan: But it will always be recipient-driven.
Walt: Biz, please tell me about your name.
Biz: I couldn’t pronounce my name, which was Christopher Isaac Stone, and I said “bzzz” and that was that.

A note about our coverage: This liveblog is not an official transcript of the conversation that occurred onstage. Rather, it is a compilation of quotes, paraphrased statements and ad-lib observations written and posted to the Web as quickly as we were able. It was not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one.

Is Twittermania Running Face-First Into Quittermania?

Peter Kafka — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:29:46 +0000

Remember all the way back, a couple weeks ago, when everyone was talking about Twitter and Oprah and Ashton Kutcher and the millions of people who were joining Twitter every week?

Turns out the majority of those new Twitterers won’t be back in May.

So says Nielsen Online, which estimates that 60 percent of Twitter’s users leave after a month. That makes sense on a gut level to me: Twitter is easy to use, but it often takes a while to make sense, and if you’re not a professional self-promoter–or someone with a lot of friends who are already on Twitter–it may never make sense.

It’s worth noting here that Nielsen is likely overstating the churn because it is only measuring visits to the Twitter.com URL. The majority of Twitter use happens away from the site, on mobile phones and apps like Tweetdeck, and it’s theoretically possible to be an avid Twitterer but never visit Twitter.com after you sign up. I’ve asked the Twitter folks for their take on the stats and will update if they respond.

But let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that the Nielsen stats are correct, or close to being correct. Is that a problem? Obviously, every Web service attracts new users who never come back after they try it out, so churn in itself isn’t a problem. The question is the rate.

The good news is that Twitter’s 40 percent retention rate is higher than it used to be. Prior to the Oprah madness of this month, Twitter’s rate was closer to 30 percent, Nielsen says.

But the measurement company argues, via a fancy chart and equation, that 40 percent retention makes it mathematically impossible for Twitter to achieve significant penetration with Internet users. The simple version is that if Twitter loses three out of five users a month, its growth will be capped at about 10 percent of the audience. Fancy version below (click chart to enlarge):

And here’s how Twitter’s retention rate compares to that of Facebook and MySpace (again, note that Facebook users and MySpace users more or less have to visit the those sites to use them, so the numbers are likely slightly skewed):

So what if Twitter really is a service that appeals to no more than 10 percent of the Internet audience? Is that such bad thing? Not at all. That’s an awfully big number.

And “retention” may end up being the wrong metric to measure a service like Twitter, anyway. See this perceptive post by Andrew Chen (thanks to OMGPOP’s Dan Porter for the link).

But a lot of the Twitter sales pitch–to investors and would-be partners like Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT)–is contingent on the service’s eventual ubiquity. The appeal of Twitter’s real-time search capabilities, for instance, is less seductive if you’re only searching what a sliver of Internet users are Tweeting about. And knowing that growth is capped could make that impressive hockey stick chart a little less so.

[Image credit: Weegee via the International Center of Photography]

Another Twitter Ad: AT&T Sponsors "March Tweetness"

Peter Kafka — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:03:57 +0000

Earlier this week, Twitter started rolling out its first ad experiment–an “ExecTweet” page, sponsored by Microsoft (MSFT). Here’s the next one–a “March Tweetness” page, sponsored by AT&T (T).

Everything about the newest ad gambit is parallel to the earlier one: It’s run via Web ad agency/network Federated Media, and consists of a page that Twitter endorses and will promote on its site.

And just like the ExecTweet page, most Twitter users won’t see Twitter’s promotions since most Twitter usage happens away from Twitter.com. And just like ExecTweets, March Tweetness is a collection of themed Tweets that you could find on your own, using Twitter’s handy search function, which it paid $15 million for last year.

But this one looks marginally more useful to me: Unlike ExecTweets, there is a rhyme and reason to collecting Tweets tied to specific events–in this case, different games during college basketball’s March Madness tournament. One of Twitter’s most compelling features, after all, is its ability to deliver snippets of thoughts, in real time, so I could see people actually using this one.

Birds of a Feather Twitter Together

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:20:02 +0000

If you’ve heard of Twitter but don’t exactly know what it is or how it works, you’re in good company. In the past two months a bunch of my friends, ranging in age from early 20s to late 30s, have asked me about Twitter — or Tweeter, as one person accidentally called it.

To clear things up, I’ve put together a basic Twitter guide that explains how to use it, Twitter lingo, privacy options, mobile applications that can be used with the service and problems that it has. Let’s get started.

Twitter limits social-networking updates to 140 characters or less. The service is surprisingly useful, but leaves room for improvement.

What is it? In short, Twitter is a free social-networking tool that keeps people connected with one another and with sources of information. Twitter users submit updates about whatever they’re currently doing, and these updates cannot exceed 140 text-based characters.

Lingo: Twitter is the name of the service. The term twittering describes the activity of updating a Twitter account. A tweet is an individual Twitter update. Twitterers are people who use the service.

Followers, not Friends: Social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace use the term “friend” to refer to people who are connected with one another, but Twitterers can simply follow one another’s messages by finding a person’s username and selecting a “Follow” option. This alerts the person that you’re following them, and they can reciprocally choose to follow you, or not.

Why use it? While some people primarily use Twitter to post updates about their activities or comments on the news, I use the service more as a follower, allowing me to see quick snippets of news as it occurs. Most tweets are written by real people, while others, such as updates from news organizations that you’ve selected, are automatically generated. Many tweets include the addresses of Web sites with relevant articles that tell readers more on a topic.

Where is it? Twitter works on your Web browser at Twitter.com, where user updates appear in a simple list form as they are submitted. After you’ve signed up and started following other people, those people’s updates, or tweets, will appear when you log onto Twitter.com using a username and password.

Twitter also works on mobile phones, where the 140-character limit allows messages to be sent and received via SMS text messaging. Tweets can also be sent and received via email. Users with smartphones like BlackBerrys or iPhones can use one of the many popular mobile applications for accessing Twitter, which offer much richer options than simple SMS does; I’ll get into these later.

Privacy: Unlike other social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter isn’t focused on holding and sharing personal information about its members. Indeed, the service operates with a majority (80%, according to the company) of users opting to keep their updates public, that is, follow-able by anyone, without permission. This openness encourages people to follow one another or to see who others are already following, and then follow the same people.

However, users can opt to protect their updates, meaning they must grant permission for others to follow them. If you’d like to sign up for Twitter, but aren’t comfortable putting your first and/or last name on the site, you don’t have to; instead, just tell others your username.

Twitter Page Personalization: Each user has a Twitter page showing all of his or her updates, or tweets. (Mine is twitter.com/kabster728, and you can follow me.) This page also shows the number of people a user follows, how many people follow her and how many total updates she has posted.

Twitterers can customize their Twitter page by uploading a photo to be used as the background. The icon representing each user can also be personalized, and this is important because it appears beside that person’s tweets on Twitter.com, where followers recognize and appreciate its familiarity. Some people, including me, use pictures of themselves as their icons, while others use random shots.

Apps/Clients: Twitter works on any browser, and will also work on a mobile browser. If you have a mobile device like the BlackBerry or iPhone, you can jazz up the experience by downloading a third-party app like TwitterFon, TwitterBerry, Tweetie or Twitteriffic. Twittervision, another mobile app, plots points on maps to show where tweets originated. Desktop clients also abound, including Twhirl and TweetDeck. Twitterfeed will set your blog to automatically post content to Twitter.

@Replies, Direct Messages: Each tweet that appears in your Twitter feed can be replied to using a shortcut arrow that appears beside the tweet, and these responses to tweets are called @Replies. So if JoeSchmo tweets to say he saw the new James Bond movie and hated it, you can reply to this with a tweet of your own that says, “@JoeSchmo I still adore Daniel Craig.” These @Replies appear for everyone to see, and must start with @ plus the username of whomever you’re responding to.

Direct Messages differ from @Replies because they can be sent only between people who are following one another. These messages aren’t posted publicly. They appear on your Twitter.com page in a right-side section labeled Direct Messages and will also be sent to your mobile device if you have one registered with Twitter.

Favorites: If you read a tweet that you really like, you can save it as a favorite by selecting a small star beside the tweet, thus adding it to a Favorites section on your homepage. Anyone can see anyone else’s Favorites, regardless of whether or not they’re following one another.

Problems: Twitter’s bare-bones approach gets to the point quickly, displaying tweets in a simple, quick-read format. But the site is lacking in many areas. It used to enable searching for people on Twitter, but that capability is currently down. Now, to search for friends on Twitter, you must upload your email contacts from a Web-based mail service. The company says it plans to have people-search working again by the end of the year. Meanwhile, search.twitter.com enables keyword or location searches.

Twitter lacks the ability to sort tweets according to what the user wants. If I just want to see tweets from real people and not those that are automatically generated, I’m out of luck. Same goes if I want to keep certain friends’ tweets in a prominent place on my homepage; Twitter has no way of doing this.

Twitter users aren’t notified when someone responds to their tweet with an @Reply. I recently happened to look at @Replies on my Twitter homepage and found three from people who follow me (I don’t follow them).

If you’re adding a Web address to a tweet and the characters in the URL take up too much space, Twitter will automatically use TinyURL behind the scenes to shrink your long link into a shorter one when you post your tweet. But this works only if you have enough remaining characters in your tweet to fit the long version of your link. A built-in TinyURL converter on the page would help immensely.

Twitter says it’s working to make @Replies more effective. It also says it plans to do more with filtering and sorting, so that the Twitter interface is more useful. In the meantime, Twitter does a good job of giving people simplified news about others and the world around them. If you’re often in a rush, Twitter can be a great resource for fast information.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com