Twitter appears to be on the verge of some big changes to its website if a tweet that Twitter engineer Alex Payne sent today is any indication. In fact, the new features may be so good that they could make some people re-examine their use of desktop Twitter clients, apparently. As Payne writes:
If you had some of the nifty site features that we Twitter employees have, you might not want to use a desktop client. (You will soon.)
Not surprisingly, that tweet had a few third-party Twitter developers worried.
“@al3x as a developer, i’m not sure how to take that looming tweet….,” wrote developer Chad Etzel (who actually used to work part-time at Twitter). Payne immediately repsonded, “@jazzychad I don’t mean that developers won’t be able to compete with the site. We still release most everything API-first, of course.“
While I dabble with both Brizzly and Seesmic Web, I still mainly use Twitter.com day to day, so the prospect of these new, more powerful features excite me. The reason I never got into one of the desktop clients is the same reason I only dabble with Brizzly and Seesmic: The lag in the API (and the rate-limit) annoys me. But that should hopefully change soon with the new Twitter firehose of data.
Last year, Twitter added two huge new features to Twitter.com: Lists and Retweets. It’s hard to imagine what else they’re working on for the site now. One definite possibility is baked-in geolocation, which Twitter currently offers through its API, but not on the site itself.
While new features are great, Twitter has to be careful not to make things too complicated. The core of Twitter has always been its simplicity — if you start tacking on features, that goes away quickly.
That said, there is still room for improvement. Certainly, search is one area on the site that could use an upgrade with more options. The upcoming Twitter ads are thought to be built around Twitter Search, so it’s likely a candidate for an overhaul sometime soon.
It’s worth noting that Twitter also recently hired a new UI guru away from LinkedIn. This was the guy largely responsible for LinkedIn’s nice iPhone (and other mobile platforms) app. Could Twitter be getting into that game too? And should third-party developers be worried by these moves? Twitter Lists in particular encroached a bit on what services like Brizzly were doing (though they now play nicely together). Any more encroachment and Twitter’s upcoming developer conference, Chirp, could be very interesting.
Update: More from Payne:
Uh, everything I like that’s on the employees-only beta site is actually *built* on public API methods we’ve already given developers.
And:
I just mean that our web client team is building cool stuff. It’s going to inspire desktop app developers. Same data, new perspectives.
And both lists and retweet suck.
I personally like Twitter’s lists feature, but I never use Twitter’s so-called retweet. If I want to retweet something, I get out of Twitter and go to Slandr to do it.
Screenies please.. Although, I could use some extra added AJAX effects whenever I hover my mouse to a thumbnail pic of a person and his/her details will fallout. Instead of clicking it..
Maybe this new feature is going to be used to pave way for the new twitter ads that’ll be launched this year?
No disrespect intended, but who is Alex Payne? I’ll take the answer off the air.
Agreed, neither their Lists or Retweet features have been “huge”, and “baked-in” geolocation wont be either. None of those have improved basic usability, search, or on-boarding issues.
I’m expecting something much more interesting/functional to emerge in the next 30 – 60 days that will address any or all of the 3 areas mentioned.
I have to agree the whole reason I like to use twitter is because its uncluttered and simple.
I’ve just gone the route of forgetting about twitter.
Fantastic news. I can’t wait for Twitter to take Loic and Seesmic to the woodshed. It’s time for an ol’ fashioned ass whoopin’.
Seesmic does not deserve an ass whoopin.
I agree, and I doubt Seesmic should be concerned. They provide unique value additions outside of Twitter alone. They also have about the best level of support for their products that I have seen in recent years.
Ability to annotate my RTs would be great. Hope it’s one of those features! :)
Yeah, they need retweet annotation feature, amazing was not there from the get go.
And 3D. I’d like twitter in 3D.
I would also like twitter to do antivirus checking.. and probably tweet about it if anything is found.
“Last year, Twitter added two huge new features to Twitter.com: Lists and Retweet”
Thats hardly huge features for a web app – yes the scale is big but its does not justify a company with over $100million in funding release only 2 new small features in ENTIRE YEAR!! come on.
Lets wait and watch what finally comes out. This could seriously give trouble to the 3rd party developers business.
Which is always the problem with building a business around someone else’s business. If you’re going to build one, better make sure everyone understands when times are flush, rejoice, but don’t count on flush times forever. As the song says, Go on, take the money and run.
Desktop clients are integral part of twitter.. I am eager to see what are the changes they are going to make
People developing on the Twitter API should know there’s more and more functionality going into Twitter.com – it’s nothing to fear IMO. Certainly inevitable.
With the pending rollout of the Ad model, pageviews will of course be a factor, it makes sense that Twitter would introduce features to keep the everyday user satisfied. If the ads are initially served on the search side as speculated, expect to see more features around search on Twitter.com. It’s good business.
It does bring light to some potential holes in the existing 3rd part apps anticipated business models, but this shouldn’t be a surprise. Though we haven’t seen any business models emerge around these 3rd part client apps, so who knows how this impacts their plans?
I doubt their ad biz model will depend on twitter.com pageviews, but rather on tweets views and clicks. And those may come from any client. I think they try to ignite developers to take a broader look at available APIs and innovate further.
Probably will introduce the ability for staff/employees to manage 1 (the site/company) twitter account.
that’s already been testing. but yes, that’s probably coming out broadly, relatively soon (at least for business accounts)
*confetti*
Yes Twitter will make UI changes and world gets better. Get over it guys.
http://i.imgur.com/fZEz5.jpg
That’s my twitter stream. Person tweets, 30 minutes later there’s a techcrunch article.
Ha. New media at its finest!
How is seesmic, tweetdeck, twitroid, tweetie, socialscope, hootsuite and on and on and on going to make any money, especially now.
I’m not sure they are connected, they weren’t making money before.
Twitter is all about simplicity and do more with less. So any new features that preserve these two main aspects is a real challenge.
I wished that had implemented a way to inject some texts in the re-tweeted tweets.
1. URL shortener so you can see the short URL before you tweet
2. Scheduler so tweets can go out at a specific time
n
They hired a UI guy from LinkedIn? What’s next? A privacy expert from FB???
Oh that is funny! I was thinking along those lines, too. LinkedIn is about the last company to try and emulate from a UI standpoint. The very worst complaint I can imagine about LinkedIn is their UI. Well, perhaps the disproportionate level of unemployed people groveling shamelessly for work, but that was not entirely their fault.
Great reporting MG. I am late to the party as a developer but I have found that Twitter is a bit too fair with it’s API power.
I think for sure Twitter could be made to stay open in a browser tab (or mobile browser tab) with activity going on there.
More so, I would love to see them update their console to show tweets and DM in real-time without the need to refresh.
As Ayush Agarwal said last year at the Seattle Cool Twitter Conference, “There is no bill of rights for developers.” Despite what Alex and others at Twitter have said, I think the “cowboy” days are fast nearing an end in the Twitter ecosystem.
The Twitter ecosystem is moving from “life on the edge of chaos” to sustainable business models, formal partnerships, software engineering best practices, *managed* growth and realistic expectations. That’s why I’m planning to go to Chirp – because I want to be “in the room” when it happens.
As I’ve posted on my blog, there are some exciting things going on at Twitter. (http://borasky-research.net/2010/02/17/a-peek-under-twitters-hood/). But please don’t call Twitter’s growth and maturing “encroachment”, because it isn’t. The pie is still getting bigger – let’s not pretend it isn’t and start fighting over slices of it.
I’m interested in seeing what these new features will be, but I doubt they’ll convince me to switch from using Tweetie for Mac. A web page can’t launch Growl notifications, for instance. Desktop applications have a number of inherent advantages over web interfaces.
It’s great to know that Twitter has got great features in store for us. Can’t wait to test them out :D.
I stopped using the Twitter site since I got Threadsy <3
Twitter is turning out to be a damn smart company. They haven’t made a bad decision yet. Each move is well calculated and strategic, as they have to keep thinking 3-4 steps ahead all the time.
“Uh, everything I like that’s on the employees-only beta site is actually *built* on public API methods we’ve already given developers.” -@alex
This story could be summarized as “Company flush with VC cash and talented engineers to release incremental improvements to web app.”
It is about goddamn time. There is no other blogging client that depends on third parties to do the basic functions of a site as much Twitter does. Could you imagine if WordPress require roughly 2 billion third party apps just to use?
This is NOT good. Twitter’s added features are usually implemented with poor usability and accessibility and with crappy API support. They can’t even get the basic stuff right (reliable service, user-friendly interface, etc). Needless to say, the new features will have NO effect on most 3rd party apps.
sounds like mr payne has been hauled over hot coals.
It’s about time! I would much rather give my web love to Twitter than to Seesmic. It’s time Loic and the other pariahs woke up and realized that they are parasites living off of Twitter when, in fact, Twitter owes them nothing. Please Twitter…release new features and make us come back and use Twitter.com. I’m first in line to come back. As for Loic, maybe he can go back to video chat and try to be a parasite on Chatroulette’s API.
thanks my friend, I am a first class parasite.
“It’s hard to imagine what else they’re working on for the site now.”
Are you kidding me!? With all that much data coming thru Twitter, you’d think Twitter should provide you more ways to organize and make sense of them as you please……….
If they plan to monetize Twitter as they have talked about for a very long time, some changes are certainly in order. Making the site more useful seems a logical step in that direction.
Does anybody recall talk of a soft deadline in mid-2009 for rolling out their monetization plan. It seems that Twitter is making slow progress in that direction, but perhaps just trying to avoid doing something that will irritate people. Perhaps they are afraid of being beat up the way Facebook is any time a change is made.
it’s about time Twitter does that, because they have yet to roll out other features for the site, which can be quite beneficial to Twitter users.
i deleted my twitter account yesterday because they wanted to make my email addy available to the search engines. 3000 tweets and a cool nicname gone in a click. i had stopped tweeting when that retweet thing came out but i continued to log in and scroll thru. yesterday’s notice was the last straw. i had the entire right side column adblocked also so i didn’t have to look at the crap. not one feature they added did i care for. imho twitter is just dumping garbage features into the system to see what sticks. i haven’t visited in twenty four hours. not even for the earthquake updates. i ain’t going back. of course if my withdrawals and delirium tremens become too much to resist i know i can just create another account. however the mere speculation of geotagging and more stupid features to come simply reinforces my will to stay away. it’s too bad they couldn’t leave well enough alone.
Twitter will screw its ‘developers’ the same way Facebook did and for the same reason—its all about the $$$$$$$$$.
My thoughts exactly. They may be telling developers that everything is cool, but some time down the road the desire to actually make money will take over and the developers will get bent over the desk.
100% right.