{"id":39709,"date":"2011-12-17T00:26:22","date_gmt":"2011-12-16T22:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=39709"},"modified":"2011-12-17T00:28:39","modified_gmt":"2011-12-16T22:28:39","slug":"six-ways-the-new-new-twitter-changes-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/39709-six-ways-the-new-new-twitter-changes-everything.html","title":{"rendered":"Six ways the \u2018new new\u2019 Twitter changes everything"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0launch of a major new version<\/a>\u00a0of Twitter\u2019s service signals one important thing:\u00a0Jack Dorsey<\/a>\u00a0is back. And Jack is in charge.<\/p>\n

His strength has always been in the \u201cproduct\u201d and up until now, there\u2019s been an obvious void at Twitter.<\/p>\n

In many ways, it was trying to do everything for everyone \u2014\u00a0Evan Williams<\/a>\u2019 strength was never in product (think \u201clists\u201d), and temporary boss\u00a0Dick Costolo<\/a>\u00a0was never going to be a visionary when it came to the platform.<\/p>\n

1. Consistency<\/strong><\/p>\n

New New Twitter finally delivers a consistent experience across all platforms: web, mobile, apps. The service has always been disjointed. The web site was heading in one direction, a very liberal API meant a highly fragmented ecosystem of third-party apps, and mobile was very much an after-thought (until fairly recently). The\u00a0acquisition of Tweetie<\/a>, which meant it had an \u201cofficial\u201d app for Mac and iPhone, solved one problem but created another: Tweetie wasn\u2019t exactly anything like website \u2014 they didn\u2019t quite \u201cbelong\u201d together. Dorsey\u2019s influence in the product is obvious, and there\u2019s been deliberate thought given to each element of the experience. There are rough edges \u2014 of course there\u2019d be \u2014 but these will be fixed.<\/p>\n

2. Identity<\/strong><\/p>\n

Folksy Twitter handles, which in the early days were the main element of a user\u2019s identity, are far more de-emphasised in New New Twitter. Twitter now says \u201cRetweeted by Hilton Tarrant\u201d or \u201cIn reply to Hilton Tarrant\u201d, regardless of my handle. This move sets Twitter up in direct opposition to Facebook and Google as a store of your online identity (something I\u2019d argue is overdue and it needs to be). Why else would it redesign profile pages so prominently around the concept of identity? (It also means picking a handle is far less important; growth means unwieldy usernames like @DavidJones96_UK<\/a> are becoming more common.)<\/p>\n

3. Mainstream (or \u201cungeeking\u201d)<\/strong><\/p>\n

By elevating the @ and # to two of the main tabs on the new platform, Twitter is trying to take rather obscure and geeky elements of the original service into the mainstream (despite the symbols). @ means simply \u201cConnect\u201d. # equals \u201cDiscover\u201d. This is far simpler to understand and provides a more obvious home for each of these activities. You could see Twitter heading in this direction with the \u201cActivity\u201d tab, which it piloted recently (why were @ replies, retweets and follows separate streams in the first place?).<\/p>\n

4. Monetisation<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cDiscover\u201d is the key to making money. The\u00a0infamous \u201cDickbar\u201d<\/a>\u00a0that Costolo launched to \u201csurface\u201d content (and paid-for keywords\/tweets\/ads) never had a natural home on the top of your timeline. The # tab provides a natural home and the algorithms that help surface relevant content for you will become key to monetisation. The more Twitter knows about your interests (and who you\u2019re following), the better it monetises. For advertisers, the new \u201cbrand pages\u201d finally provide brands with a natural home on the service, instead of seeing that traffic sent off to Facebook.<\/p>\n

5. Twitter everywhere<\/strong><\/p>\n

Allowing users to\u00a0embed a tweet<\/a>\u00a0like they do with a YouTube video is an attempt at extending Twitter platform beyond just its properties (and third-party apps). Coherency on the different platforms (web, mobile, apps) is a big step to try take it into the mainstream. Expect some restrictions on what third-party apps can and can\u2019t do in future. Growing Twitter beyond its current (limited) audience gives it the shot at monetisation it needs. It desperately needs to turn into a business (especially since\u00a0it\u2019s raised<\/a>over US$1-billion in venture capital funding to date!)<\/p>\n

6. Culling the clutter<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lists and DMs (direct messages) have been folded into (\/hidden in) the \u201cMe\u201d menu. You shouldn\u2019t expect lists to stick around for much longer \u2014 you could argue they were never all that useful to begin with! The de-emphasis of DMs has caused a backlash online, but only really among the early adopters (who are probably the only ones using the feature). What is interesting to consider is Facebook\u2019s push to private messaging (with the unified chat\/e-mail\/notifications inbox) versus Twitter\u2019s push to (almost completely) public messaging.<\/p>\n

This is not the end product, rather the start of Dorsey and Costolo\u2019s vision of where Twitter is going. Expect a big push around monetisation in 2012.<\/p>\n

Source: Moneyweb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jack Dorsey is back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":25179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[7405,7403,35,7407,405],"class_list":["post-39709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-dick-costolo","tag-evan-williams","tag-headline","tag-jack-dorsey","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39709"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40011,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39709\/revisions\/40011"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}