I have an open love/hate relationship with Facebook. I love the community of the Church Communications Group, but I hate the interface because it lacks clear focus. Twitter on the other hand has always been more my taste. It was pure. You can post text, links, or images. The interface was straightforward and I didn’t have to worry about maintaining security settings. However, somewhere along the way Twitter lost me. It lost its ability to be a utility for me and contribute to my daily life. I don’t know the exact moment it happened, but I think was when they introduced “Twitter Moments”. Twitter Moments is their digest of curated news. It even has its own icon on their home screen.
Here’s the kicker… I don’t find majority of the Twitter Moments news. In most cases, it’s pure drivel. Don’t believe me? Here’s some Twitter Moments from this morning.
“Kevin Love gets meta with his courtside Christmas sweater”
“Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ daughter finally has a name”
“26 everyday things Muslims did that got them kicked off planes”
Now, I never held Twitter accountable for what other users publish on their platform. However, when Twitter take on the role of curating and publishing news, then they’re putting themselves in a whole new category in terms of responsibilities.
Instead of focusing on curating faux news, Twitter should be spending time creating more tools for their users. For one, give users the ability to edit tweets (and keep a revision history for everyone to see). Work on speeding up the verification process and figure out a way to decrease the number of anonymous accounts.
But Twitter has chosen a different course, and I think users (growth is virtually flat) and even top management have voted with their feet. It’s a shame because I’m thinking about doing the same.