Twitter’s Conversation Changes
If you’re a Twitter user you may have noticed these strange blue lines in your
timeline linking tweets that are part of a conversation in chronological order (oldest
first). Of course, this can be a little bit daunting at first, because Twitter’s timeline
works from newest first. Don’t worry, you will quickly get used to it.
In the past Twitter users needed to click a tweet mentioning other users in order to
be informed about, understand and even join conversations being had by people
they follow. The new conversation format changes this.
One of the primary effects of this is that users are included more in conversations
that people in their timeline are having. It encourages them to join the conversation.
This is in Twitter’s best interest because it gets people to tweet more about likely
important issues while interacting with people.
This is an interesting change, as it shows that Twitter is going through its features
and experience with a magnifying glass and trying to enhance anything (and
everything) they can. Ultimately, these conversation changes have the effect of
helping Twitter become more social by encouraging more interaction between
tweeters, instead of solo commentaries. People new to Twitter see their timeline
sprawling with conversations, making it a much more interesting social network.
Another small addition that supports this point is the fact that Twitter has made
it significantly easier to edit your profile. Now you simply go to your profile and
click ‘edit’, and the information — bio, location, web address, display picture — all
become editable.
So why? These changes are part of a much bigger picture. Twitter’s primary
competitor is Facebook, and it’s not harsh to say that Facebook are playing dirty.
We mentioned in a previous blog that Facebook has basically copied the idea of
SnapChat and will be releasing its own version within two weeks. Lately, Facebook
has also introduced hashtags, and word on the street is that they’re looking into
trending topics and even attacking LinkedIn by adding a ‘professional skills’ section.
On top of this, Facebook are trying to take some of Twitter’s core advertisers (TV
broadcasters) by integrating tools to give them access to user data.
Ultimately, Facebook is trying to be Facebook (as it always has been) but is
also trying to be Twitter, making it useful for social conversation but also global
conversation, which has always been Twitter’s absolute forté. Naturally Twitter will
be concerned, as it would be very easy for them to be effectively cannibalised by
Facebook’s rapid speed of innovation.
Other examples of Facebook and Twitter’s growing conflict is that of Vine and
Instagram video, with Facebook releasing the latter’s video capability basically in
direct competition with Twitter’s Vine video service. Vine was an attempt by Twitter
to extend its abilities as a social network, and add video. Vines would appear in the
drop down info of a tweet and be viewable straight from there. However, Facebook
knew that if Instagram had video capability then it would cannibalise Vine, because
the people who already have a following on Instagram would like to share videos too.
It would seem, however, Twitter still have a firm grip on their place in the social
network stratosphere, though it doesn’t change how worrying Facebook’s new
feature implementation is for them. For many, Twitter has been Twitter and
Facebook has been Facebook for a long time. They are different kinds of social
networks, and the reason they are separate is because people like them separate.
Ultimately, one of the most worrying factors here is the idea that we might end up
with less effective social networks because of this competition. If Facebook keeps
trying to be Twitter, and Twitter keeps trying to combat this by adding Facebook-like
functionality then we ultimately just end up with two almost identical social networks
that are just as good as the other at doing the same thing. And that’s not how it’s
meant to be.
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