Three suggestions to improve Twitter


Three things Twitter needs to do to improve its user experience:


  • Timeline syncing/bookmarking. I use Twitter on my iPhone, my iPad, the Windows 10 Twitter app and TweetDeck. Each time I open a new app, I have to figure out where I left off in the other one and scroll to find new tweets. Tweetbot has very successfully figured out how to sync timelines across its iOS apps - when I open up Tweetbot on my iPad, it automatically figures out where I left off on my iPhone and starts my stream from there. This shouldn't be so difficult for the actual Twitter app to do.

  • A consistent look, feel and usability across its apps. As noted by a well-read and learned blog recently, Twitter recently updated the look of its iOS app. The Favorite, Retweet and Reply buttons are on top of the tweet, next to the account icon. On the web, the Favorite, Retweet and Reply buttons are on the bottom. The Windows 10 app looks different still in terms of placement of images versus text. TweetDeck also has its own peculiarities. The web version and the iOS app version support polls. TweetDeck does not support polls. Neither does the Windows 10 version. Why is it so hard to get a consistent experience across the various platforms? 

  • Live broadcasting from the app and a more unified approach to video. As pointed out by a well-read and learned blog a while back, you can upload 20 second pre-recorded videos directly into Twitter. You can tweet short, looping videos from Vine, which Twitter owns, and you can live-stream into Twitter from Periscope, which Twitter also owns. What you CANNOT do is open up a Compose New Tweet window in Twitter and engage a live broadcast from that screen. (You can do exactly that, however, in Facebook.) Adding a BROADCAST button from the Compose New Tweet screen would let people bypass using Periscope completely, and keep them in the Twittersphere without having to download another app on their phone.

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