[zaidf]

Has a social network at twitter's scale ever been able to undo a growth plateau? In this business you live and die by organic growth.

I have so many problems with the twitter product I don't even know where to begin. I am working on writing my own UI to twitter to look more like facebook. At its essence, I long for a twitter that:

* makes it easier to follow and indulge in conversations(facebook does this)

* filters out noise, such as retweets or same links showing up 5 times from 5 different people

* remove the 140 char limit; we've moved away from 140 chars with sms for a reason and it is time for twitter to do the same

[swordfish0321]

Remove the 140 char limit and you remove the one thing that makes twitter twitter, brevity. You want it to look like Facebook??? Facebook's UI is a hot mess resulting from trying to pack every feature under the sun into one platform--no thanks. Moreover it sounds like you don't really know how to use Twitter and I think that is the real problem the company faces. Most of the people out there on twitter don't really understand how to leverage the platform to benefit them which is a larger educational-level issue they need to attack head on. The genius thing about twitter is that they've created a sort of psuedo protocol in a sense that works best when rapidly disseminating information. While you certainly can, it is not the tool to use for any sort of lengthy conversation, save that for Facebook, email, or whatever you prefer.

[zaidf]

Facebook UI might seem like a hot mess to you, but I can promise you it is getting more engagement and growth for facebook than twitter's. At a time that twitter is struggling with those two things, they should do more to be like the guy who is nailing growth and engagement.

[swordfish0321]

Again you're reinforcing my point on education by comparing Facebook to Twitter. You can't compare the two just because they are both "social networks". They are two completely separate tools with separate purposes and more importantly separate users. Facebook has larger numbers because their user pool is larger and probably always will be. Grandmas look at pictures of grandchildren, high school friends keep in touch, that one guy you're friends with posts obnoxious religious or political rants. There is no barrier to entry, it's the worlds large public bulletin board and that's okay. These people aren't concerned about consuming aggregate information rapidly. When Facebook people come to twitter looking for Facebook they get disappointed. You don't hear Facebook users bitching about Pinterest needing to change because people expect a different experience from Pinterest. If more users coming to twitter from other networks better understood the platform they would be way less likely to be left scratching their head. Like I said, this is a problem that twitter needs to solve, but in the mean time if you enjoy Facebook and find twitter unusable then it's probably not the tool for you.

[Greenisus]

If you want Twitter to be more like Facebook, why not just use Facebook?

I agree that I'd like for it to be easier to dive into a conversation. It's a lot better than it was years ago, but I still struggle with the UI for that sometimes.

As for the 140 char limit, I think that should never change. Removing that would remove the entire essence of Twitter and turn it into endless drivel.

[zaidf]

I do already use facebook pretty much all day. But twitter has a different audience and has more conversations relevant to work. Except the UI sucks and makes me work my ass off to engage in those conversations. If facebook or linkedin ends up eating twitter's lunch at some point, I won't complain.

[Grue3]

> Removing that would remove the entire essence of Twitter and turn it into endless drivel.

Funny, because that's exactly what it is right now. When was the last time there was something worth reading on Twitter?

[Vik1ng]

> remove the 140 char limit; we've moved away from 140 chars with sms for a reason and it is time for twitter to do the same

I disagree. I think that is the only reason Twitter still exists. 140 allow you to look trough the stream very fast. Try to follow a hashtag with the same amount of posts on Facebook or Google+ would be impossible