And both lists and retweet suck.

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’.

Ability to annotate my RTs would be great. Hope it’s one of those features! :)

“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.

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?

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.

Lets wait and watch what finally comes out. This could seriously give trouble to the 3rd party developers business.

How is seesmic, tweetdeck, twitroid, tweetie, socialscope, hootsuite and on and on and on going to make any money, especially now.

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.

I’m not sure they are connected, they weren’t making money before.

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???

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.

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.

I stopped using the Twitter site since I got Threadsy <3

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.

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?

Seesmic does not deserve an ass whoopin.

Ha. New media at its finest!

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.

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.

Yeah, they need retweet annotation feature, amazing was not there from the get go.

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.

“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……….

I have to agree the whole reason I like to use twitter is because its uncluttered and simple.

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.

And 3D. I’d like twitter in 3D.

thanks my friend, I am a first class parasite.

Twitter will screw its ‘developers’ the same way Facebook did and for the same reason—its all about the $$$$$$$$$.

Whatever they are working on needs to helps us increase our twitter count.

The Padrino
http://www.thepadrino.com

If they plan to make Twitter more user resource full 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.And it is a great news to all.If twitter can add more features.

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.

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.

I never quite get the Twitter’s strength is its simplicity argument. Having to register, learn and then use another service to send pictures, video or audio are all additional steps and have to be counted towards use of Twitter. That isn’t simple at all. It’s cumbersome. My gratitude at them hopefully providing more of the functionality they should have had on board from the get go is endless.

Integrated youtube and pictures please. It’s just unintuitive to constantly click through a bunch of links in the stream.

[...] Twitter To Add “Nifty” Site Features That May Make You Forget Third-Party Clients [...]

What else is Twitter coming out with?

So they are finally realizing the value of Rails. Too bad it’s riddled with UI issues, lol.

The new features will ‘inspire’ the desktop client developers. I don’t see any ‘threat’ meaning there?

haters.

Before rolling out any new features, they should get it to work seamlessly! The timeline has been stale for the past 2 hours now, lots of accounts are affected while others are running normally. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it!

[...] via: techcrunch [...]

Does that mean we all can start using password123 as our password soon? That sure would be nice. :)

[...] TechCrunch’s MG Siegler ran hard with a tweet from Twitter engineer Alex Payne about that Twitter was working on some “nifty” new features that would deter people from using a desktop client. [...]

I like how he went back and “clarified” his original Tweet. Probably after the higher ups were bombarded with calls from 3rd party developers and Desktop App developers bitching and moaning. I bet his boss got an earful. Even Twitter employees seem to need a company Twitter guideline for shutting the hell up.

Its obvious to me that they are talking about GeoLocation.. since a desktop client wouldn’t be able to really support it…. Twitter wants people to use it on the mobile device…

@David I would love the youtube and photo integration. Seems like a must have as all of this ties together to streamline the service. Still, the work it takes to build these 3rd party apps should be appreciated :) 3 cheers for the little guy :)

I’ve just gone the route of forgetting about twitter.

Well, all the desktop Twitter clients really really suck (except Tweetie for Mac, but it needs a big update), so it’s not a big deal for Twitter to do better on the website…

Twitter doesn’t have anything that will last in my opinion. They need to keep tweaking it and find something.

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?

Good scoop MG! As some others commented, you have to be careful about building a business on someone else’s platform.

However the whole company of Twitter is a platform. The adoption has been aided so much by their open APIs. They have been a platform company more than anything else and there is no need to go overboard on this one thing.

It it natural for them to improve the website since most people agree that it has not been that great.

At the same time, with regard to features and monetization, there is only so much they can do themselves and there will always be opportunities for developers on the platform.

lol. yup it’s always a balancing act with twitter. Is it spam or is it useful. I use it extensively for my business, but it is challenging to cut down on the crap. I think you are right when you say it is going to be a challenge to keep it simple whilst adding needed functionality. I’ve posted a quick followup post here http://drivingonlinesales.com/?p=367 and linked back to here.

[...] Twitter looks set to release some kick-ass new features that will upset more than a few 3rd party client providers. [...]

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.

It’s incredible the number of 3rd party apps that already support twitter. I’m not certain that twitter is doing the right thing by alienating them, since they were part of the reason for their success in the first place. Now they are just going to cut them loose? Bad Karma. http://drivingonlinesales.com/?p=367.

[...] follow when you’re only interested in ones from family members. Now, Twitter is apparently ready to roll out some new features; features that, as of right now, only employees have access [...]

[...] Twitter To Add “Nifty” Site Features That May Make You Forget Third-Party Clients (tags: twitter) [...]

[...] Jungs von Techcrunch haben ein interessantes Tweet von einem Mitarbeiter aus dem Hause Twitter aufgegriffen: Alex Payne [...]

[...] And hopefully they won’t make that mistake. So what will they do?Well, that depends. As the article on TechCrunch rightly points out — the upcoming talk about a Twitter ad network is really going [...]

[...] [read] AKPC_IDS += "2542,"; Share and Enjoy: [...]

Twitter can’t keep it simple because they still aren’t making any money, they need to find revenue streams

No disrespect intended, but who is Alex Payne? I’ll take the answer off the air.

100% right.

MG -I enjoyed reading your post and the reader comments that you inspired with the news of Twitter releasing innovations to their platform. I personally have not used Twitter’s own interface with any regularity in months. I have been a Tweet Deck user for months and I am presently switching over to a personal branding friendly third party application.

I have always said that Twitter is the property of it’s creators and we have the privilege to utilize it and monetize it for our own purposes free of charge. So, with that being said, I am fine with Twitter making any changes they see fit and if the platform on day no longer meets my needs, I will graciously move on and be grateful for the time I spent leveraging Twitter. I has transformed many aspects of my business.

It will be interesting to see what these new features are and I am certain that the certified (this is a another change coming mid-year) third party application developers will create new applications based on the new features. I do not see application developers fading away – unless of course Twitter wants them to do so.

Thank you for the thought provoking post!

James

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.

I would also like twitter to do antivirus checking.. and probably tweet about it if anything is found.

Reading this article … the author talking about “developments” killing TweetDeck … and in the same article writing that he does not even realy know TweetDeck, that he is not using it, cause the website with its “lists” is so WOW and he can’t imagine how to make it better ………

Come on. Am I the only one who thinks that the author has no clue about what he is writing?

[...] There’s a hint that Twitter is getting ready to launch a new site designed to replace many of … Lookout TweetDeck, duck and cover Brizzly, Twitter is gunning for you! [...]

[...] Techcrunch vient de mettre en avant l’un des derniers tweets du lead developper de Twitter, Alex Payne qui évoque une nouvelle version de Twitter.com en cours de développement et qui devrait inspirer de nombreux partenaires qui offrent leurs propres interfaces d’utilisation du service (Seesmic Desktop, etc.) [...]

Throw in the preview features of Brizzly and I’ll probably find myself back.

[...] was quickly picked up by the technology blog Techcrunch – leading Payne to begin refuting his tweet, and the Techcrunch post, in the same medium as [...]

[...] man nämlich den obigen, etwas kryptisch geratenen Tweet von Al3x, dann plant Twitter offenbar nichts anderes, als in Konkurrenz zu seinen eigenen [...]

[...] Twitter To Add “Nifty” Site Features That May Make You Forget Third-Party Clients – A Twitter developer says via the service that new features are coming that may make users [...]

[...] Twitter To Add “Nifty” Site Features That May Make You Forget Third-Party Clients [...]

[...] : TechCrunch Pour Suivre les Infos de TwitteRadar Suivre les auteurs sur Twitter : SeoMan , Gus et Xavierv Et [...]

[...] vielsagenden Tweets hat der Entwickler Alex Payne, der bei Twitter an der API arbeitet, für Spekulationen in Bezug auf neue Funktionen für das Web-Interface von Twitter gesorgt. „Wenn ihr einige dieser raffinierten Features hättet, die wir als Twitter-Mitarbeiter [...]

There is a reason most of us use the twitter desktop 3rd party apps. They are better than twitter.com and they don’t tie up a browser window.

Each app has improved a lot along the way too. Each has some great features. And each is taking up less memory with every new version.

Twitter is doing nothing other companies have not been doing. They want to control every aspect of their product. And in turn, squash the innovation of 3rd party developers along the way.

To bad for those using twitter.

[...] 3:33:51 PM: #Twitter arbeitet an neuer Website mit neuen Features http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/27/new-twitter-features/ [...]

[...] he inserted a big chirping bird in his mouth and ended up with a fail whale of backlash. This tweet started [...]

[...] he inserted a big chirping bird in his mouth and ended up with a fail whale of backlash. This tweet started [...]

[...] he inserted a big chirping bird in his mouth and ended up with a fail whale of backlash. This tweet started [...]

[...] blown out of proportion. It could possibly be a combination of the two. Technology blog TechCrunch took the tweet and ran with it, speculating that Twitter "appears to be on the verge of some big changes," and noting [...]

[...] There’s a hint that Twitter is getting ready to launch a new site designed to replace many of … Lookout TweetDeck, duck and cover Brizzly, Twitter is gunning for you! [...]

[...] le souligne TechCrunch, ces nouvelles fonctionnalités pourraient venir améliorer Twitter Search et donner ainsi plus de [...]

[...] from Google or just about any other map provider to do that? Oh, OK, cool. I will also wager that Twitter will be making some huge location announcements very [...]

[...] – – Source : TechCrunch – – [...]

[...] that’s right, TechCrunch managed to just explode one tweet by Alex Payne of twitter into an entire blog post without bothering to verify anything first. Not only did techcrunch writer MG Siegler operate the engine of this speculation train, he managed [...]

Nice strategy by Twitter ala Sun Tzu style. ;) *Wink*
Then again all is not lost for TweetDeck or Seesmic as they can incorporate other features or notifications for other 2.0 apps out there. This is a wakeup call for TweetDeck and Seesmic IMHO.

My most desired feature that would bring me back to Twitter web (from itweet.net/web) is threaded convos/replies. I *hate* being taken to a new tab or window to see what someone is replying to.

Am I the only one caring about this?? I seldom-to-never see it mentioned in features articles or discussions.

[...] : TechCrunch API, Seesmic, TweetDeck, Twitter Web [...]

[...] Este fin de semana Alex Payne, uno de los ingenieros de Twitter publico en su perfil un tweet que está desatando muchas implicancias alrededor. El mismo explicaba sobre las nuevas y atractivas características de la interfaz web de Twitter que estaba reservada para los empleados de la compañía, pero que en breve estará disponible para los usarios. Payne describe que estás características son tan buenas que pueden hacer a un usuarios volver a utilizar la interfaz web. [...]

[...] in the world? Oh and make sure you follow Electricpig on Twitter. Due TBC | £TBC | Twitter (via Techcrunch | TWIT [...]

[...] news, actually, on Techcrunch today. All you see today on Twitter.com besides their initial concept was taken from 3rd party [...]

[...] Twitter To Add “Nifty” Site Features That May Make You Forget Third-Party Clients, TechCrunch [...]

[...] Twitter To Add “Nifty” Site Features That May Make You Forget Third-Party Clients Twitter appears to be on the verge of some big changes to its website if a tweet that Twitter engineer Alex Payne sent [...] [...]

It is always interesting to see how Twitter expands over time as people want to see more than just status updates. At the same time this is a very inspirational website to others as it started with nothing and has expanded so rapidly!

Many stock investors could use a similar inspirational website and I have found that inspiration for myself, and hopefully for other traders at http://invetrics.com/

It is a great website with free stock trading signals that is up more than an incredible 80% for the year! It has already earned me several thousands of dollars and more to come! Make sure you check it out!

I can’t wait to see what they have in store. I’m not a massive fan of lists or the new retweet function so hopefully they’ll have something a lot more useful soon

[...] TechCrunch speculates that Alex might be talking about baked-in geotagging, and cites third-party Twitter web client Brizzly as an example of a featureset that Twitter could duplicate. The advantage of bringing things like filtering, location-based search, and more powerful follower-management tools to Twitter natively is that they won’t have to deal with the delays or API rate limits that third-party devs face. [...]

I’d love better search features, it’s sooooo hard to find/organize stuff right now. Other than that, it’s pretty close to perfect now :)

[...] the weekend, I couldn’t help but notice a very interesting tweet by Twitter engineer Alex Payne. I couldn’t help it because a number of people in my stream [...]

[...] the third-party apps are shooting in the dark. A post by one of Twitter’s developers, picked up and run through the rumor mill by MG may hint at what may be coming down the pike (maybe in May?), but until there’s solid word [...]

Twitter to Introduce New Features True or False?…

Over the weekend I read an interesting post on Tech Crunch by MG Siegler a regular contributor at Tech Crunch. This post is titled “Twitter to Add Nifty Site Features that May make You Forget Third-Party Clients” and was in response to a tw…

[...] he is shutting down his personal blog after a comment he posted on Twitter became the subject of a TechCrunch blog post and caused a minor firestorm among Twitter application developers and others involved with the [...]

[...] had tweeted that they had some nifty features that might stop people from using desktop clients. This led to a blog post on Techcrunch and lot of heartburn among developers since many are developing solely for twitter [...]

I was at the recent Twitter API developers meetup at Twitter HQ and naturally the subject of this came up.

Here’s a video showing the ‘official’ response to all this:

http://tech.phreadz.com/x/3FAE09P30G3G/

[...] TechCrunch noted in its blog post, such a comment – now deleted – had some third-party Twitter application [...]

[...] lanzado por al3x, Alex Payne,  uno de los ingenieros de Google, en el que daba a entender que internamente están usando algún tipo de función que podría hacer que utilizar aplicaciones como Tweetie, Tweetdeck, Seesmic, [...]

[...] TechCrunch noted in its blog post, such a comment – now deleted – had some third-party Twitter application [...]

[...] is shutting down his personal blog after a comment he posted on Twitter became the subject of a TechCrunch blog post and caused a minor firestorm among Twitter application developers and others involved with the [...]

[...] developed at Twitter. This tweet, now deleted, made technology news headlines and according to TechCrunch many third party app developers were [...]

[...] путь: techcrunch [...]

[...] une voie : techcrunch [...]

[...] route: techcrunch [...]

[...] that changes might be coming to upset that system, and in typical tech world fashion, received coverage by leading tech blogs. This finally resulted in his posting an apology over a misguided statement that was misconstrued [...]

[...] Weg: techcrunch [...]

[...] that changes might be coming to upset that system, and in typical tech world fashion, received coverage by leading tech blogs. This finally resulted in his posting an apology over a misguided statement that was misconstrued [...]

[...] Facebook heeft zo’n 700 miljoen verdiend in 2009, schat men…. En ze zijn goed onderweg naar 1.1 miljard in 2010! En dat allemaal om je vrienden te kunnen porren en te zorgen voor je virtuele boerderijtjes. Twitter werkt ondertussen blijkbaar aan nieuwe mogelijkheden voor zijn website. (Facebook on track to make real money, Twitter To Add Nifty Site Features That May Make You Forget Third-Party Clients) [...]

[...] Twitter To Add “Nifty” Site Features That May Make You Forget … [...]

I agree.

Twitter has already started implementing new site features. for instance, the new geo-location feature. it actually shows what town your in. And in the Time-line, if you hover over someone’s tweet, a little information about them pops up.

Sorry, you hover over their icon.

[...] Twitter engineer Alex Payne’s comments about planned improvements to the home page that he made last month. Even if he subsequently backtracked (and deleted his tweet), clearly something is afoot, and if [...]

[...] reading TechCrunch’s MG Siegler’s article discussing this ambiguous tweet, I was reminded of a great [...]

[...] just ask Twitter developer Alex Payne who immediately had to gobble some of his own words when he tweeted about the “cool features” they had that others didn’t.  Like it or not, these are the new marketing “leaders” in [...]

It’s great to know that Twitter has got great features in store for us. Can’t wait to test them out

[...] to use a third-party client.” TechCrunch wrote a post speculating that this meant Twitter was going after third-party apps, and Payne decided to stop blogging in part because he thought his comments had been misconstrued. [...]

[...] just ask Twitter developer Alex Payne who immediately had to gobble some of his own words when he tweeted about the “cool features” they had that others [...]

[...] is understandably wary. Twitter bought its own iPhone app. Twitter made its own Android app. Twitter is hinting at new features that will rival third-party clients. If you’ve been a developer in the [...]

I never quite get the Twitter's strength is its simplicity argument. Having to register, learn and then use another service to send pictures, video or audio are all additional steps and have to be counted towards use of Twitter. That isn't simple at all. It's cumbersome. My gratitude at them hopefully providing more of the functionality they should have had on board from the get go is endless.

yes, now Twitter growing up, and they still provide more "nifty" features

They hired a UI guy from LinkedIn? What's next? A privacy expert from FB??? :)

probably XD

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