Google+ Has Made Twitter Boring — Here's What Twitter Should Do About It

For the past few days I’ve been hanging out in Jackson Hole with a bunch of geeks and one thing I’ve noticed over and over is how boring Twitter has gotten when compared to Google+.


Why has Twitter turned boring?

I’ve found several areas:

1. First experience.
2. Pictures and videos.
3. Control over content distribution.
4. No API, no auto pushing of content.
5. Signals are visible from who you excited and pissed off.
6. Auto flowing webpage.

So, let’s take each of these areas on, and talk about what Twitter could do to make users excited again.

FIRST EXPERIENCE

Forget everything you know about social networks. Now, visit my Twitter account. Then visit my Google Plus account.

Which one draws you in more? Which one shows engagement? Which one has a better about page? Which one shows passion, excitement, that something is happening? In all cases, Google+ is blowing away Twitter and it’s not even close.

So, what can Twitter do?

1. Buy Twylah. Look at my landing page there, it’s MUCH better than what’s on Twitter. Then, Twitter should add some stats on each twitterer. Stuff like “how many retweets has she gotten today?” or “how many @ replies does this user answer?” That would make Twitter more engaging and interesting.

2. Completely revamp the list idea in Twitter. If you follow one of my lists, which I’ve spent hundreds of hours on, they DON’T DO S**T ON YOUR ACCOUNT! This is so lame that in, alone, will get me to pour more time into Google+. But, what should they do? First, if you follow a list all those people’s tweets should be added to your home feed. Second, if you follow a list you should be able to send your Tweets to people on just that list. Third, if you follow a list, you should be able to send private messages to those people. Fourth, the people on the list should be able to tell the list itself whether that was OK or not.

3. Get rid of the freaking spam on search and give us amplification abilities and noise controls. Many new users will come because a blogger or someone will say “hey, we’re talking about the new iPad on Twitter.” Have you ever looked at a search for the word iPad? It’s full of crap and spam. There’s no way to say “only show me items written by people with a Klout score of more than 30 (which would get rid of the spam) or there’s no way for me to say “show me only items that say “Apple iPad” and that have a positive sentiment.” If there were, many new users would see the value in Twitter, especially around news and location. Instead, every search I’ve done lately is full of spam. Boring! 


PICTURES AND VIDEOS

Google+ has beautiful photos and videos. Twitter? Just page after page of mind-numbing 140 character items. Now, Flipboard demonstrated to all of us that photos and videos CAN be added into the display, and the new Twitter UI does do some of that, but it just isn’t enough. Google+ is blowing Twitter away here.

So, what could Twitter do? Totally rethink the clients it owns, and rethink the stream itself. Let us add photos and videos into each tweet and, even, let us do that outside of the 140 character limit, which would let Twitter continue to blow away Google+ on where it is strong: which is on mobile.

CONTROL OVER CONTENT DISTRIBUTION

Google+ lets me publish a post to JUST A SINGLE PERSON +or+ to a small group of people, or, even, to a circle that has 5,000 members in it. Twitter has no such way to do this.

Why does this make Twitter boring? Well, because, my friends can feel safe sharing, um, “racier” posts with me on Google+ where on Twitter they either need to DM me, which isn’t as good as a group (my other friends can’t say “great photo” for instance) and isn’t nearly as nice.

What can Twitter do? Revamp lists. But Twitter’s management thinks lists suck, so I don’t see Twitter getting this feature anytime soon and that’s really too bad. It’s what will really put Twitter into a box and soon, you’ll see, how this affects search and all sorts of news. This is Twitter’s weakest point, and it will become more and more apparent that Twitter has blown a real opportunity here to make its system more interesting.

NO AUTO-PUSHING OF CONTENT ON GOOGLE+

I look at Twitter and a lot of it has turned into a boring RSS feed. I get items from news organizations, and even people now are using it to automatically Tweet (there are even systems that will send out tweets automatically at specific times). I don’t know who really posted these items, and I don’t get answers back from these people a lot of times because, well, they aren’t even online. Not true over on Google+. At least not yet.

This is one area where I’m not sure how Twitter can help, but Google has chat and “hangout” videoconferencing features, which help me see whether someone is really online and available (even Michael Dell has done a few hangouts and those really get people excited). So, I would add some interactive features into Twitter where the sender MUST be online and there to answer them.

THE POSTS AUTOFLOW

If I open a web browser and put Twitter and Google+ side-by-side, one automatically shows me new stuff, one doesn’t. That makes Twitter look old and crappy. Yes, if you use newer Twitter clients you can get tweets to autoflow, but I’d rather have the web page do this like Google+ does.

Anyway, there are other things, as well. On Google+ the Notification page shows you anytime you get engagement. Twitter has nothing like that. It’s amazing how cool that is.

Are you finding the same thing? So far I’ve been asking the geeks I’m hanging out with here in Jackson Hole and they really are seeing these differences and wonder how Twitter will react to them.

Me too. So, Twitter, what you gonna do to keep from being seen as the most unexciting social network?

UPDATE: Here’s a post about this over on Google Plus so you can see the kind of engagement that I’m getting there. 

Anonymous To Build Its Own Social Network Called AnonPlus

Hacker collective Anonymous is preparing to launch its own social network called AnonPlus. The move comes after Google banned Anonymous’s Google+ account called “Your Anon News” due to a violation of its community standards.

Details about the project are scarce. Currently, AnonPlus.com is merely a splash page, containing a message that explains the group’s motives behind the project. “Welcome to the Revolution,” it says, “a new social network where there is no fear…of censorship…of blackout…nor of holding back”.

Another message on the site explains that the project is for “all people not just anonymous,” adding that the actual site will go up soon but it will not happen overnight.

A link to the developer forum, where a possible user interface and design ideas are discussed, shows that the project is indeed in a very early stage.

A somewhat similar project, Diaspora, aimed to create an open-source social network as an answer to Facebook. After launching in late 2010, however, there has been no significant news about the project

My $1.70 anti-theft IPhone case

The picture we waited 30 years to complete

Father and Son: STS-1 and STS-135

The picture we waited 30 years to complete.

Dogs Are Imitating Human Lifestyles

Dogs are our first pet and became best friend because of their versatile nature like protecting, haunting, helping police, sociable, companion etc. Domestication of dogs started about 15,000 years ago. In this long course of time they have tried to imitate human behaviour and lifestyle. Actually their voluntary power to imitate human behaviour increased due to domestication and developmental training by human.


However here are few funny photographs of dogs imitating human lifestyle. Enjoy those great moments of your best friend.

Dying teen’s last wishes go viral on the internet.

“Alice’s Bucket List” is a blog created by British teen Alice Pyne, a 15-year-old with terminal cancer. The idea of the blog is to document how precious the time she has with her family and friends is and includes notes on the things she hoped she could do before her illness got the better of her.

Alice’s first blog post was on June 6, 2011. Within three days, the might of the Internet was behind her, cheering her on, donating to the causes she supports and helping her to work through her bucket list. While it’s difficlt to determine when the blog went viral, it is known that John Woodcock, a member of the British Parliament, raised awareness of the blog in a meeting with the Prime Minister on Wednesday and that many other celebrities (including musician Katy Perry) posted about Alice on Twitter over the last few days.

The hashtag #alicebucketlist is climbing Twitter’s worldwide trending topics chart, raising hope that one of Alice’s top bucket list items, getting everyone to be a bone marrow donor, may be completed.

Alice explains that she didn’t create her blog for profit, she simply made it for her family and friends. Even so, she is excited about the attention and encouraging people to support a cause that is dear to her heart:

                                             “So, I was never begging and I don’t need any money but I do love to get                          your messages and I hope you’ll follow my blog and keep leaving me a message. I will                                 take a camera with me wherever I go and I’ll post photos of everything I do. In                                                                                                       return, you can keep asking everyone                                you bump into to join the bone marrow donation schemes in your country.”   

 

A lot of people are inspired by Alice’s story and are contributing to that particular bucket list item. Unfortunately, some wishes on the list will probably not be entirely fulfilled. Of the 17 items on Alice’s list, there are several (such as traveling to Kenya or becoming a dolphin trainer) which she admits she can’t do due to the progression of her illness. She’s not letting such thoughts her down; the teen is savoring every beautiful moment she can and challenging the rest of us to think about the very thing we all try to avoid thinking about:

If today was your last day on this earth, how would you spend it?

Tons Of YouTube Users Putting Up Videos In Protest To S.978

We've been talking a lot about Senate bill S.978, from Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn and Christopher Coons, which would adjust the criminal copyright statutes to make some forms of linking/embedding/streaming a felony for which people could face 5 years in jail. As we've noted from the beginning, the really scary part is the ignorance of people supporting this bill, in ignoring how it could make tons of people liable. They insist that there's no problem here because (a) the bill requires the streams/embeds to be for commercial purposes and (b) because the "value" has to be greater than $2,500. What they ignore (despite plenty of people pointing it out) is that it's not hard for people to show that something is done for commercial purposes. If you have ads on your site, even if they make you pennies, you're "making money." And the "value" of the work can easily be estimated or exaggerated at over $2,500. Again, no one is claiming that the feds are suddenly going to go after your average YouTube embedder, but the problem with this change to the law is that it could be used that way. Federal prosecutors have made use of ambiguous or questionable laws like this in the past, such as attempts to misuse the CFAA bill, which is designed for those who break into computer systems, against people like Lori Drew who was mean to a teenager on MySpace.

We've noted that the bill is getting more attention of late, and it appears that the YouTube community has awakened to the problems with it. If you now do a YouTube search on s978, there are a rapidly growing number of results, with plenty of people speaking out against the bill, in part due to claims and some videos from YouTubers related to worries from video gamers.

Tragically, going through a bunch of the videos... nearly all of them gets the facts wrong in some manner (sometimes getting nearly all the details wrong). I worry about that, because it allows politicians to brush aside the very real concerns about the unintended consequences of the bill. Also, some of the incorrect statements seem to lead to people saying that the bill won't pass because "something that stupid can't pass." And, indeed, no bill is going to pass that will force all these people to take their videos down or to fine them for old videos as some have suggested. The risk is in how the bill could be used by federal prosecutors to go after people embedding certain videos, and then using the letter of the law (though clearly not the spirit) to go after people.

It's good to see so many people speaking out, but it would be better if they spoke factually about the bill, rather than running with some of the wilder assumptions that people seem to be making.