Twitter Groups

Since my discovery of Twitter years ago, I have been enamored with it. I always felt that status messages had a lot of potential for broadcasting your current state of being, whether mental or physical. But Twitter has gone much further as it exceedingly creeps toward critical mass. I believe there are three different ways to post your status on Twitter:

a.) Share thoughts and ideas with friends
b.) Receive traffic by sharing content with people who want it
c.) Mechanical turk for getting answers to questions

It is an incredibly powerful tool for getting the word out to those who granted permission to notify them of something new to share. Since the reader has control over who can notify them, they are able to prune their feed to their own personal taste.

Here is where groups could help. Initially, I used Twitter as a backchannel for web developers. It was open, transparent, and provided the opportunity for others to offer their opinion – like a fast forum or slow chat group. Over time, as more people became Twitter users, the conversation engaged a wider audience. Herein lies the conundrum; as more people join Twitter, the opportunity for group-related conversations disappears. Twitter is more of a broadcast and crowd sourcing medium than a communication platform. While it can certainly be used for both, it is now exceptionally good for getting the word out over being an open group messaging service.

I don’t follow too many people for this reason. I want to prune what I receive, and from whom. Personally, I barely follow 60 people. More than 100 seems like too many ideas to hear, links to be shared, or distractions to fall victim. Following thousands of people seems like a nearly useless feed, moving so quickly that you would miss something interesting from someone you truly care about. I don’t know if I am gaining the fellowship as quickly as others because I opt to pick who I follow. I could care less. For me, I would like to see Twitter incorporate a groups feature, allowing me to organize the people I follow in a way that is relevant to the information I seek. Since these playlists are merely filters, I can still view my entire feed, but I could add people to groups that I find to be relevant.

Simply adding a tab to the sidebar named “Groups” would barely affect the overall interface. Clicking the tab would reveal a standard page with a feed of the people you’ve added to that group. Much like the @ Replies section with the in-page sub-tabs, each user could have up to 6 custom-named groups. Although these people would normally be displayed in the main feed all at once, the specific people I select to display in a group also display in there. For example, I could have “Work”, “Family”, “Friends”, “Colleagues”, “Tech” and “Design.” A simple interface for changing group names is tied in, as well as an easy way to add people to multiple groups or remove them just as easily. What I have created are simple mockups of how I would unobtrusively incorporate these features into Twitter, and strategically place them so they require zero adjustment efforts and effects on the user experience.

These aren’t private groups. Instead, they are merely different ways to group feeds that are relevant to you. Assuming fewer feeds per room than your normal feed, their slower pace allows you to keep track of ongoing conversations or focus on a group of posts to find something of interest based on the grouping’s niche. A similar idea can be achieved today by creating various accounts and carefully following specific feeds on each unique account. By using a multi-account Twitter client, you can toggle between the accounts and each feed is organized in a similar fashion. Maybe this is a product idea for Twitter’s cottage industry; I think it is a missing feature of Twitter itself.

Now that they have added a few ways for people to find you, I think it is time to add a way to organize people into groups based on interests. This way we can use it both as a broadcast medium and a way to follow in a more organized fashion, no matter how many people we follow or follow us. In the above illustrated example of a currently followed profile, I have added a simple drop down box that asks if you would like to add the feed to a specific group. The issue is that it only allows you to add the user once. The alternative concept below is possibly a better method of adding people to groups, as long as it is kept to six customized groups.

I have added checkboxes to the six groups I have created above. By simply checking or unchecking boxes I can add this person to any group. To make changes, I simply click on the person in my feed and make adjustments. Now that we’ve established the benefits of adding groups and how to add or remove people, the next step would be setting up group names.

I realize that the Settings section is getting a bit overloaded lately, but let’s just say we put our group management settings in there. With this interface I tried to account for every possible request a user might want out of groups. This may be considered overkill, but I like to leave no stone unturned:

1. Use the cross hairs to reorder your group tabs
2. Click the checkbox to make the tab visible
2. Change the name in the text box
3. Click “View” to visit that group
4. Number of people assigned to each group
5. “Reset Group” removes all feeds assigned to that group

Make changes and they are automatically saved as you adjust them. I tried to make the UI as simple as possible while still keeping a large assortment of modifications available.

Ultimately, this is one way we can all begin to organize the people we follow, based on our own personal preferences.

Posted on Jan 21, 2009 by Kevin Milden

Post Your Thoughts