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Branch builds on the Twitter experience by providing a framework for curated conversations but could it succeed as an integral part of the social network?

Twitter is due a shake-up and I maintain that the #discover tab could become the default view thus enabling the service to further engage the silent 40%. The site has been growing but whether this growth is sustainable with the status quo might be open to debate.

Something needs to change.

Twitter is not a social network, we are repeatedly told this and it is becoming increasingly true as our feed is filled with links. It is hard to have a conversation within the fragmented 140 character environment but people still do it - an enjoy it - and choose Twitter as their primary social destination.

For years I have described Twitter as a facilitator and once a spark has been ignited we should take the resultant conversation to the most appropriate forum.

Is branch that forum?

Branch, when recently opened to the public, is a conversation platform that can be used to discuss anything but its reliance on Twitter for authentication and its close association with the network (via the Obvious Corporation) raise some interesting questions.

For Twitter to continue to grow and become more powerful there need to be mechanisms in place to connect users to information they want and this includes targeting them with relevant ads. As Promoted Tweets are priced on a Cost-per-Engagement (CPE) basis Twitter needs more users interacting with those tweets to gain revenue.

I was asked if Twitter would buy Branch (ignoring whether Branch would even want to be acquired) and my initial response was no, why would they, but further thoughts on the matter present arguments both for an against.

Could Branch be an ideal way for Twitter to achieve the growth it needs? Some knee-jerk, back of a napkin logic says no for a couple of reasons:

• conversations on Branch are taking you away from the seemingly sacrosanct 140 character limit, and
• any time you create a branch you are removing people from the feed, away from those all important promoted tweets and away from the ability of onlookers to see - and potentially get involved in - the conversation.
• and what about losing the service outside of Twitter itself?

On the face of it, an acquisition of Branch would not make sense but what if the Branch functionality were to be re-purposed and redesigned so that it becomes a part of the Twitter interface and user experience? Part of the workflow.

Building conversations

For many, a key component of Branch is the browser bookmarklet which allows a user to "branch out" a single tweet to use as the basis of a curated conversation rather than trying to continue it within the confines of Twitter's restrictions but what if these conversations could be kept inside the network?

If we work on the earlier assumption that the #discover tab (or a future iteration of it) will become the default Twitter view then could Branch-like conversations be an ideal way to get users discussing key topics?

As well as a traditional reply, normal tweet conversations could also employ this mechanism (perhaps via a built-in option to "branch this") with a reference to the branch included within an expanded tweet; could branch become an alternative conversation view so that even multi-user conversations can be better followed and managed?

But, what of the 140 character limit?

Twitter has been keen to stick to its mobile roots so that those without smartphones, perhaps in emerging markets, or in circumstances where there is no reliable data service (such as countries where the government controls web access or during times of crisis) can tweet via text and keep their sharing their messages.

Would the service want to develop a two tier system? Perhaps we could argue features such as #discover and expanded tweets are already doing this but neither the consumption of tweets (either in the stream or on #discover) nor the use of expanded tweets preclude users from sending messages and receiving those from subscribed users via SMS.

As I have previously suggested, users would still be tweeting to their feed if not browsing the latest updates on #discover and there would be no reason to change the 140 character limit for this purpose.

Channels

Almost two years ago I first suggested that Twitter could employ a method of using"channels" to enable discussion about a particular topic in a focused stream without spamming the main feed. Last year, Twitter trialed event pages which showed a separate, curated stream for a particular event - although the tweets still remained in the public feed.

Branches could achieve a similar result by removing potentially noisy, topic based discussion from normal view but with the conversation visible to all just a click away.

Taking a risk

We have to consider if the current system is enough or whether enabling alternative functionality is essential to the continued expansion of Twitter?

Both switching to #discover as the default view and the introduction of an alternative conversation mechanism would be incredibly risky but, if introduced as options, would let users tailor their experience based on their requirements whilst allowing the purists to stick to 140 characters in the primary feed.

Branch is a natural expansion to the Twitter experience and one which could provide significant value for the network if it was brave enough to pursue it.

26th December 2006.

Today marks the sixth anniversary of my joining Twitter and what a ride it's been despite me not even being the most prolific of tweeters.

Six years is an eternity on the internet but, while the core principles behind the site remain unchanged and the maxim of 140 characters is sacrosanct, the service has developed in ways we never envisaged.

Third party tools allowing us to “tweet longer” rose in popularity but Twitter was adamant that this was not the way to go. Somewhat ironically, the service now has an inbuilt mechanism which lets us display more info that ever in the form of Twitter Cards.

This time last year I made a number of predictions as to where Twitter (amongst other things) was heading and, with the exception of saying that a more Flipboard-esque UI would be introduced for the #discover tab, was pretty close.

#discover continues to iterate become more personalised as it caters to the 40 percent and I still maintain that, in future, it will become the default view - the official face of Twitter - or that users may be given the choice between this or site feed depending on how they use the site.

What is fascinating is that, even in the early days before SXSW 2007 when there was virtually no one using Twitter, some of us instantly saw the potential it had to offer and were willing to devote our time to what many viewed as a gimmick or a fad.

I'm glad we did.

Social networking on the Internet has been around longer than most realise, albeit not in the form most currently associate with it. Bulletin board services and, later, forums formed the bulk of our social interaction even before the days of messaging applications and was inherently interest based.

Instant messaging began the obsession with connecting to people which continued through to the social networks we know and love today.

Interests

Social has moved on from the early days of Facebook and Twitter with an increasing noise to signal ratio meaning that it is getting ever harder to find quality within the mass of information.

Users have been crying out for ways to manage their interests with existing solutions not coming up to scratch; I have long said the social network that works out how to manage the interest graph will find itself in a very strong position.

It makes sense that we should try to manage our time online in accordance with our interests, as I have mentioned before that:

Apart from family and existing friends ... the interest graph is actually the primary driver behind expanding the social graph.

Our social networks need to reflect the implicit groups brought together by shared interests or circumstance rather than the continual reliance on explicit user lists.

Twitter is iterating the #discover tab to better facilitate discovery and it is being increasingly personalised but this falls short of the true interest based discussion that I proposed in Going Beyond the Hashtag.

There have been a couple of instances of Twitter "event pages" for NASCAR and the London Olympics but that feature appears to have gone quiet. As I wrote previously:

Events pages give a curated stream specific to a topic or event using "a combination of algorithms and curation"

The key here is that event pages stream to their own timeline so are as close to my concept of channels as any network had previously achieved.

Communities

The launch of Google+ Communities is a direct recognition by a major player that we need the ability to focus on topics as well as people. We have already had the ability to use hashtags and saved searches but these are treated as second class data.

Communities are given equal prominence to the Stream and, unlike saved searches, treated in a similar way to Circles allowing us to share directly to a community from anywhere, including a +1 button out on the "normal web".

Google+ was launched under the auspices of being "real world sharing rethought for the web" with Circles intended as the means to segregate our contacts enabling us to target specific groups with matching content but, as we know, people are multi-faceted and this type of grouping is not sufficient even with tight management of our Circles.

Shared circles were designed to enable us to share groups, primarily with a similar focus, with others but, as each person is free to customise the shared Circle in their own way, there is no guarantee of a consistent community via this method. Even though the Circle members might have been collected in relation to a given topic we are still adding them as individuals along with all their facets.

Old tricks?

Communities are forums for the social age.

A community is focused on a topic rather than on the individuals which contribute to it and, in creating them, Google has turned the social web full circle.

Each community is, in essence, a forum dedicated to a specific interest but with the advantage of being located within our existing social environment which facilitates easier sharing. The addition of categories - to guide conversation and create sub-topics - is directly akin to sub-forums and we are able to filter by these categories to restrict the view to exactly what we need.

My primary argument for content channels was to keep focused content out of the primary stream thus reducing the noise for others. Communities, acting as forums, achieve this perfectly whilst allowing for all posts made to also show on you profile should it be viewed directly - exactly as I proposed it would operate for tweets.

Communities and social gravity

While the community itself is topic focused it is inevitable that some communities will initially be more popular due to their owner or members being influencers. The success of these groups to stay popular and, indeed, of smaller groups to attain more popularity will be subject to the principles of social gravity.

As discussed, social gravity is a property of groups as well as individuals with the relationships and engagement between members just as important as the content they post although this must obviously stay focused, consistent and accessible.

What next?

Communities are given greater prominence than saved searches and assist in removing unwanted noise but they are still separate from the stream and create a divided environments which deflects attention - I'm not sure if this is ideal.

As stated above, Communities are treated more like Circles but, in my opinion, this does not go far enough and we should be able to integrate their contents into our main feed if we wish using a volume slider to control the amount of posts seen.

After Google announced that 135 million people are active in the stream alone a worry is that many will migrate their activity solely to communities - possibly private ones - thus reducing visible activity and reinforcing the misconception that Plus is a ghost town. By allowing user to integrate Community posts into their main view this might be avoided.

By taking a step back from the person oriented perspective so prevalent on the social web Google has, in one day, made its social network far more usable and appealing.

Along with Hangouts, Communities will provide genuine differentiation on the social web.

Twitter acknowledges that around 40% of its users do not tweet - they are consumers and must still be catered for; the company also needs to find a way to encourage them to interact further.

The writing has been on the wall for change for over 18 months.

April 2011:

It is widely accepted that Twitter is not for everyone but this may be a limitation of the timeline format. Perhaps it is time for a bit of a shake-up - they call themselves a consumption company now after all.

December 2011:

By placing an emphasis on content over people Twitter is making moves in a new direction which could encourage users to tweet and I feel that we will see the #discover tab iterate relatively quickly to facilitate this.

and...

Enabling people to comment on stories rather than reply to individual users or tweets Twitter may be able to kick-start the transition from being just consumers.

January 2012

Summify’s ability to filter your feed and pull out the salient items would be an ideal way of enhancing the #discover tab by presenting more personalised news based on your own network rather than a generic list from trending topics.

February 2012:

The feed is dead Now that our feed is predominantly awash in a sea of links it is not a very inviting place. Perhaps the time has come for Twitter to move away from this means of display and instead use a new enhanced #discover tab as the primary view when arriving at the site.

and...

Could Twitter actually become a place where we “consume” news first and talk about it after? Is this too radical a shift from the service we all know and love or is it a logical conclusion based on recent events?

All fanciful ramblings perhaps.

But now, Dalton Caldwell (co-founder of App.net) has proclaimed that Twitter is pivoting:

The Discover tab is the future. Rather than forcing normal users to make sense of a realtime stream, they can see what content is trending.

and...

The main reason that “normal users” would write messages is as a backchannel to discuss media events such as the Olympics, Election Coverage, or a new television show.

Different message

Dalton is arguing that Twitter will complete its move away from being a social network to an information/media company - the idea is the same but the message is very different.

Where I have argued that Twitter needs to change to better facilitate content discovery in an age where the feed is a sea of noise Dalton suggests that Twitter is abandoning its roots (and consequently its users) in a thinly veiled attempt to further promote App.net.

He asks "how is Twitter going to pull off their mid-flight pivot?" but I have already answered: by making #discover the primary view. The feed will still be there but the average consumer will be watching a media channel.

Sometimes it's hard being a small voice thinking no one can hear you, especially when a big voice stands up to say the same thing 18 months later (albeit with an ulterior motive) and the world takes notice.

With a new wave of social tools arriving on the scene is it time to move to pastures new? Is there as big a problem as some would have us believe or are we witnessing a knee-jerk reaction? Here's why I won't be leaving Twitter.

There is a fair-sized dose of anti-Twitter sentiment out there at present. From API changes to the dropping of external image services, mixed feelings on the new profile layouts to an iPad app that doesn't play to the strengths of the device, the network is getting hit from all angles.

Is it justified?

What can be said with certainty is that the complaints are primarily from a select group of users who accuse Twitter of biting the hand that feeds it. Unfortunately for Twitter, these users are influential so others users may be convinced of problems even if they do not experience these themselves.

As harsh as it may sound, Twitter seems to think it no longer needs the early adopters, it no longer needs the geeks, it no longer needs the original poster boys. They now form but a small part of Twitter's user base, and not a mainstream part at that.

Twitter is playing the percentages knowing that the bulk of its users are happy with the core service regardless of how it looks or how it interacts (or not) with external systems.

Value

A recent discussion thread on Google+ has posed some interesting question with regards to the value of the service and individual tweets from the perspective of both the consumer and the creator.

It is widely reported that over 70% of tweets come from first-party sources such as Twitter's web page and applications for different platforms; this figure is used to downplay the impact of the API changes and restrictions on third-party clients. Rather then the sheer volume of tweets generated, however, it was argued that the "value" of tweets from different platforms should be taken into account to see if third-party applications actually provided Twitter with more engagement than their own.

The suggestion has been that restricting third-party clients could drive businesses away but, as the premier business client (HootSuite) is one of Twitter's examples of a partner that adds value to the service, is this a valid argument?

Why move?

I may have been an early adopter (I joined the service back in 2006) and may be more of a geek than the majority of users out there but I only manage one account and actually use Twitter relatively little by comparison to many.

Despite everything, Twitter still has its core strengths:

• familiarity
• simplicity
• an existing graph
• a degree of ubiquity

The interface may be tweaked on a fairly regular basis and additional features may come and go but, at heart, Twitter is still just a short format message broadcast system. The reluctance to step away from its SMS roots, combined with the despite to create a "simplified and unified" experience across platforms, means that we have not needed to rethink the way we use the service - we can still just send 140 character updates if that is all we want to do.

Twitter is fairly ubiquitous and is a mainstream media darling allowing news consumption and citizen journalism in equal measures; its status as a common means of authentication also makes it incredibly useful as an identity service.

Advertising

Whether an advertising model is the right choice for a social network (I will not be getting into that debate here) you have to admit that we have all been advertising ourselves on the service since day one but just calling it status updates.

We are constantly exposed to ads across the web and many sites rely on them to stay alive but we don't stop using them because of it; we may ask why should a social network be any different?

The ads on Twitter aren't actually invasive and, because of the nature of Promoted Tweets it is easier to subconsciously filter them out as we scan our feed. Perhaps, the only time I can find them annoying is when they appear at the top of search results and are completely unrelated to the search term.

Media

While some may decry the move towards a more media-focused network, the evolution of the service is also adding new strengths. As I mentioned before Twitter Cards within expanded tweets will be of great assistance to content creators by resolving any question over attribution whilst presenting more detail than just a link.

Whether we share audio or video, an article summary or just an image, the Twitter Card ensures that the originator is referenced within each tweet and even supplies one-click following.

I still maintain that the #discover tab will continue to evolve and make content even more discoverable in a "non-feed" setting which may, over time, encourage more engagement.

The bottom line

The bottom line is that Twitter is a business which has chosen a path that not all will like and is making decisions it feels are required to support that choice. Until alternative services (such as App.net or Pheed) provide both adequate reach and sufficient reason, in my opinion, there is no cause to abandon a perfectly healthy channel of communication.