March 19th, 2007

Another reason why Twitter is so interesting

My obligatory Twitter post.

An interesting thing about Twitter is that, on the web site, the read page is also the write page. On the very same page that we read aggregated posts from our contacts we write our own posts to them. This is different…most tools don’t have this except IM. Not SMS, not email, not blogs, all of which usually have a separate screen for posting. And none of them except email have an aggregation feature like Twitter (some group IMs have it but don’t save stuff over time). Having reading and writing on the same page lowers the barrier to posting, making it even easier to respond or say something quick.

But are things like this important? Are tiny barriers to posting really keeping anybody back from doing so? Does having the write box on the read page actually make a difference?

Absolutely.

Here’s why. It’s set theory. It’s like this question: Which is more likely, that a person is a teenager or that a person is a teenager and has a MySpace account? Since many people equate teenagers with being on MySpace, many people will answer the latter, that it is more likely that the person is a teenager with a MySpace account. But that’s the wrong answer because that set of people has to be a subset of the first set. It has to be the case that the number of teenagers outnumbers the numbers of teenagers who also (in addition to their teenagerness) have a MySpace account.

Same with the write box being on the read page. We can ask the question differently. Which is more likely, that a person will post a message to Twitter or that a person will click a link to a different page and then post a message to Twitter? In the second case the person has to do something…we’re adding a ~~task~~ step in the same way we added that a teenager had a MySpace account…it sounds reasonable because it is the case a lot of the time but it has to be a less likely scenario.

So, any barriers to posting, no matter how small, make it less likely to happen. Combine several barriers, and the likelihood starts to drop quickly.

Grab the RSS Feed

Comments ( 17 Responses so far )

1. N.Cauldwell on March 19th, 2007 (Comment) #

Put the write input box on the read page and you’ll certainly change the community commentary dynamics - whether or not this is for the better will depend on what output is required from users.

An example: I use both MySpace and Facebook - but I use the later much more frequently because communicating with my peers is so much easier. If someone posts a comment on my MySpace profile, I can’t respond directly, I have to click through to their profile to do so (404 errors may or may not add further complications). However, Facebook let’s me comment straight back on my profile, or on the other users profile, from the very same page. This is an example of how streamlined comments can work well - Facebook is a social network that thrives on comments between users.

2. David Malouf on March 19th, 2007 (Comment) #

BTW, if you use Gmail, the writebox is on the same page as the read conversation. It is dynamic and appears progressively, but the important aspect is that you don’t loose the continuity of the conversation, which I think is the main point of the post. Does having this continuity in the structural design effect the way we use it. Does it elicit a more conversational mode.

BTW, My SMS client on my treo also maintains a conversation in a very IM like method. I’ve only really SMSed on this platform, but if I didn’t have that, I would be REALLY pissed. I love having the ability to save the history of my txts in this conversation style. Your message below scares me as I’m thinking of buying a new smartphone. If this is not the standard, that is pretty darn pitiful.

3. pauric on March 19th, 2007 (Comment) #

“Which is more likely, that a person will post a message to Twitter or that a person will click a link to a different page and then post a message to Twitter? In the second case the person has to do something…we’re adding a task”

Sorry to be pedantic (o; a step is being added, the task is the same. The reason I bring this up is that this definition aids the design goals. If you wanted quantity over quality you reduce the ‘barrier to entry’ if your design called for some degree of noise filtering then you’d increase the steps required for task completion.

The thinking being if someone had something really important to say they’ll work through the higher barrier.

4. heri on March 19th, 2007 (Comment) #

your post is about ajax, right? ajax encourages interaction and user input without having them to go to another page. correct me if i am wrong

on another point, i find it ironic that the title is “another reason why twitter is so interesting” - maybe a post about “why twitter” would be more interesting in the first place. I have yet to see a meaningful post of why I should add twitter to my workflow. RSS feeds already captures a lot of my time and adding continuous information seems like a black hole to me.

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5. Si Jobling on March 19th, 2007 (Comment) #

You’re forgetting the fundamental purpose of Twitter - it’s asking the question “What are you doing?”. Twitter is expecting, more than anything, to get input from the user before the user decides to read the Twitter history. To do this, we need Write capability before the Read feature. Hence, why the text input is the first identifiable feature of the page.

Your point is an interesting concept though.

6. Josh on March 19th, 2007 (Comment) #

Pauric…yes, a step. Thanks for pointing that out.

7. Dave Winer on March 19th, 2007 (Comment) #

Actually Radio 8 did and does that. That’s why we integrated a blogging tool with a news aggregator.

Some people wondered why we integrated a writing tool with a reading tool, you did a good job here of explaining why.

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