They key thing to remember is there is a window of opportunity for a startup to come up with a replacement for Twitter that embraces and extends its existing UX. I propose that a startup cherrypicks the best UX elements of Usenet so you give users what they don’t even realize what they want.
One issue is, instead of little banner ads, you could have very specific full-page ads woven into a thread on a subject where users could buy goods and services without going to a new Website. That’s where you would make your money and that’s what would make the whole thing worthwhile.
A use case would be that a user creates a very-specific Group devoted to, say their favorite TV show — maybe The Last of Us.
It would be one of many other similar Groups devoted to the show. But through data mining, you would know what people in that Group were interested in and you would place a full page ad in such a way that it would be unavoidable as people were going through the thread.
Remember, because the basic building block of this proposed service would be full page Posts with in-lining editing, that really expands what you could do with ads.
With the crazy, fucked up things going on with Twitter at the moment, I find myself still daydreaming about my startup idea that cherrypicks some of the UX elements of the long-dead Usenet.
The key issue is, of course, the idea of Groups. I am well aware of the strengths and weaknesses of both Google+ and Reddit. But I have really thought through how to use this service. Here’s the basic elements of the service as I imagine it
Groups Anyone would be able to create a Group about anything you liked. It would be attached to your account ID, which would allow for redundancy, which would allow for scalability. This is a very flexible nature of the service — at least in this specific aspect. You would have to have a robust discovery feature for that to work, of course. Threads These would be presented much like a traditional blog inside of a Group. This would allow for huge page-sized advertisement. There would also be a subthread feature which would be pretty cool. Posts What would be interesting about this would be you would have inline, collaborative editing like you might find with a Google Doc. You would have, say, six people able to inline edit a Post before a new Post in the Thread is spawned because you would run out of colors.
Of course, there is the problem — but very necessary — issue of controlling who can Post. Having a lot of the service Read Only for most people is the only way that any sort of service based on Groups can scale and be successful.
The fact that absolutely no one cares about this very well thought out concept despite the chaos surrounding Twitter at the moment is enough for me to realize that maybe….it’s time for me to give up and put all my attention on the six novel project that I’m working on.
And, yet, occasionally I get drunk and need to vent about something OTHER than all these novels I’m working on. All this talk about Twitter ending once and for all makes me think — then what? And if Elon Musk pulled the plug on Twitter, which I don’t think he will, then there’s a greater-than-zero sum chance that someone might take me up on all my rantings about a startup based on Usenet’s best bits.
Here is how I imagine brands might use my “Twitter Killer” on a practical basis. The key issue to remember is Brands, like everyone else, would have a far more feature rich experience to use than they would on Twitter.
Instead of just a 280 character tweet, they would have an entire webpage to work with — that would be threaded! So, say you were a Widget Company and you were releasing a new Widget. You could create new Groups devoted to different elements of this Widget.
And because you would have control over who could Post to each of these groups — they would, essentially be read-only to most people — you could all but eliminate trolls and other people who might attack your brand just because they could. They could still attack your Brand elsewhere, of course. Just not in your Groups.
What’s more, people could buy your Widget straight from a Post — with our Twitter Killer getting a cut, of course.
If you were a content provider, meanwhile, you could push content from your own site –original formatting included — into the Twitter Killer itself. Then authorized users could inline edit your content inside a Group that was threaded.
All that sounds pretty cool to me, at least. Too bad this is all just the ranting of a broke writer who should be working on one of six novels he wants to write before he crokes.
We’re fast approaching the theoretical terminal velocity tipping point in the demise of Twitter — maybe? It’s one of those, I’ll know it when I see it types of things. But the key thing to focus on is there remains a narrow window of opportunity for someone to swoop in an eat Twitter’s lunch once and for all.
But whomever did it would have to be quick about it — you probably have months, not years, to get whatever it is you want to found out the door and in the virtual hands of the currently Twitter-using public.
At the moment, it’s possible that this window of opportunity will come and go, giving Elon Musk enough time to finally get his sea legs and come roaring back. He didn’t become the wealthiest man in the world by being totally incompetent. It’s just were in a chaotic moment between him buying Twitter and him turning things around for good.
Anyway. I still wish someone would do something with MY Twitter Killer idea.
But here, again, is a basic feature set of my daydream.
Groups Everyone would have to create Groups, both Public and Private just to use the service. Everything would be found in Groups that individual users would create in an ad hoc manner for whatever they wanted to talk about. Groups would be attached to an individual User’s ID, so you could have multiple, redundant Groups about the same subject. This aids in scalability. Managed Participation One key element of a Group would be not everyone could contribute. Whenever you created a Group, you would be prompted to set participating requirements, like, say “Only Verified Users” or whatever. This also helps with scalability because even most popular Group, the ones viewed by potentially millions of people, would not become unmanageable
Threads Inside of each Group, there would be Threads. These would be laid out like a blog. Subthreads would be a clickaway and set up in a similar fashion. This does away with the clunky threading of Usenet, which just isn’t practical anymore.
Posts The Post would be the central component of the service. You would have a whole Webpage to work with. You could throw in anything you might otherwise put in a Webpage using a WYSIWYG editor. Inline, Collaborative Editing What’s interesting is, once a Post was published, there would be collaborative inline editing of that post by other Users — until, of course, you ran out of colors and a new Post was spawned in the Thread.
Absolutely no one cares or is listening to me. So, unless I win the PowerBall, all of this is a huge waste of time. But, as I keep saying, it is relaxing to keep solving different problems in this hypothetical service, even if it will never come into being.
In my imagination, the Discovery feature of my proposed Twitter Killer would allow you to find any Public Group that might have been created by another User. I vacillate between letting everyone create Public Groups and letting only Verified Users create Groups.
But I think letting everyone create a Public Group is probably the way to go because that way everyone feels equal, even though in reality they aren’t — especially when it comes to who can post in a Public Group.
Back to Discovery, though.
When you searched for a Keyword or Phrase, you would find a multitude of Groups devoted to the subject in question, with varying degrees of popularity. I suppose you might have Sponsored Groups or Leader Board Groups that are featured in some way.
There is a lot you could do with the Group concept because it’s so flexible and powerful. There might be some clutter if everyone is creating a Group in an ad hoc manner with little or no regard for how to properly name one so people understood what the heck they were about.
But that would also be some of the appeal of this element of the service. And, remember, each Group would be associated with the account of a User, so that would really help narrow down how interested someone might be in the Public Group.
There are a lot of ways the Public Group concept could go wrong, of course, but I’m really enjoying thinking up different use cases and trying to bounce up and down on this platform concept to see where I can find and fix weaknesses.
It just occurred to me how to fix a problem with my proposed Twitter Killer based on updated Usenet UX — instead of reposting each post when you post it in a group, you might allow people to inline edit through collaboration like you find with Google Docs.
This would allow the service to scale a lot easier and also reduce the risk of a zillion posts that were just people re-posting with the words “I agree” somewhere on the Post. This really fixes a huge issue with the service. My natural inclination is to make things way more complicated and nuanced than necessary, so maybe there would have to be a reason why you posted a new Post in a Thread instead of using the collaboration feature.
Maybe, essentially, you would have to “opt-in” to spawning a new Post in a Thread. The default would be just inline editing via a collaboration feature. Though, remember, you wouldn’t be able to edit someone else’s edits to a post. That’s the only way to prevent shenanigans.
There is a growing body of work written by people a lot smarter and better educated than me about different ways Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk might mishandle his acquisition and “kill” it.
Here’s my addition to all that.
It’s going to take a lot to dislodge the core 10% of Twitter users who produce most of its content. You’re going to need a better mousetrap, if you will, for them to leave the service. So, in that respect, Musk definitely has some breathing room. But at the same time, that breathing room is limited, if the perception hardens that Twitter is nothing more than a more popular version of Gab, or Truth Social, then there may come a tipping point where the service collapses and becomes just another MySpace or Friendster.
It would be at that point, obviously, where someone — probably someone center-Left — would come up with a Twitter clone that would be a “safe space” for people who just want a public form to talk about their food or rant about what a collection of deplorables MAGA is.
A lot is going to depend on the issue of what Musk actually does with the service as opposed to what his fan boys want him to do. If he pretty much just runs it the way it always has been while adding a few features, then the very forces that have made it an accidental success will continue. But if decides to let the malignant dingus Trump back on the platform, then, well, that, unto itself, could be the tipping point that leads to Twitter’s demise.
As I keep saying — all this uncertainty around Twitter’s future has opened up a very narrow window of opportunity for a similar service, maybe one based on an updated version of Usenet’s UX. That’s my idea, at least. I think that would be pretty cool.
But for the time being, I think Twitter is going to muddle through. Musk has a proven track record of success, so I think he’s probably going to pull this one off, too.
One of the many reasons why there seems a narrow window of opportunity for someone to swoop in with a new Twitter-like service is how low people’s expectations are when it comes to that space. It’s my impression that on a corporate level, Twitter has always been seen as a loosely controlled, very lucky shitshow that stumbled into its current importance.
Now that we have some sense of what people want, if you had a few million lying around, you could scoop up my “updated Usenet UX” concept and people would be so in awe that they could post a full webpage in the context of threaded discussion in a Group that you might have a real hit on your hands.
Or not, who knows.
But there is, if nothing else, Jack Dorsey’s “Bluesky” startup floating around, which apparently is going to be an opensource protocol that would allow for multiple Twitters to share the same feed — I think.
There is just a lot of potential untapped innovation within the Twitter-like space that would not require that much thought to develop. Or, I could win the lottery soon and do all of this myself. Wish me luck!
So, what would it be like for a power user of my little daydream social media platform? Let’s take the example of, say, a reporter for The New York Times. She would use Groups set to “Personal” for her private interaction with friends. There would be a Group for high school friends, a group for college friends, etc. And there could also be even more specific Groups for even more specific types of people in her life over the years.
But let’s get to the public element of this service.
Our hot shot New York Times reporter learns that there is big breaking news coming out of Washington. She, like a few dozen other high end content creators on the service, creates a public Group devoted to that specific event, with only a limited number of users having the right to post.
A heated discussion about this breaking new erupts and huge number of threads are created devoted to different elements of the event. In fact, the first Group she created — even with a limited number of people being able to post to it — has grown so huge and rambunctious that our reporter is forced to create three new, more specific Groups devoted to the breaking news.
But cause she has a full page to work with, she’s able to essentially write a New York Times-branded news article directly into the service. You might even figure out some sort of profit sharing agreement whereby the profits from the ads sold on her Posts would be split between the paper and the social media platform.
What’s more, as the crisis continued, our reporter pinged three of her co-workers at the paper and they hold a four way, live video conferencing discussion about what is known — and not known — about what is going on, with people being able to debate in real time what their talking about.
Anyway, all of this is just a daydream. But an intriguing one.
Now, I’m well aware of the failed Google social media platform G+ and its concept of Circles. While it was a strong idea, it was really difficult for the average person to understand what the fuck a Circle was and how to practically use it. Meanwhile, there are also Reddit “reddits” and “subreddits” which are pretty much a ham-handed application of the Usenet newsgroup concept of yore.
But my Group concept is pretty easy to understand and it’s also feature rich and flexible. One thing that makes the Group concept really scalable is its redundancy. Each user could great as many public or private Groups as they wished about any subject with any name. They would also be able to manage who posted to any individual Group, which would also mitigate the risk that any specific group would grow too huge and unmanageable.
So, if there was some breaking news, there might be a dozen or more really good Groups devoted to the event where well known content creators from journalism would post full page posts on the subject that would create threads that people with the right posting rights could comment on via inline editing. Many more people could simply read these discussions without being able to post.
All these features would fix some of the horrific flaws in Twitter at the moment. You wouldn’t be limited to just 280 characters. You wouldn’t struggle to find good content and you wouldn’t feel like you were being overwhelmed with a torrent of content.
I think this is a far better mouse trap than Twitter at the moment. And I only bring this up because Elon Musk is so mercurial that he could very well kill the goose the lays the golden egg and there will be a window of opportunity for some spunky, aggressive startup to swoop in and eat Musk’s lunch. But it’s a very narrow window — it’s not like there’s any interest in social media anymore in Silicon Valley.
You would have to have some vision, some willingness to throw money at a problem that most people believe has already been solved. But, of course, it hasn’t — at least not very well. Twitter was just lucky. And it, seems, it’s luck may be about to run out.
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