Guest Post- Twitter Features I’d Pay For

I agree that tracking and analytics would be great to have, but many of your other features are already available. For example, you can track who unfollows you using third-party sites and there are a bunch of desktop clients for Twitter with live updates.

For unfollows, there are two services I’m aware of: Quitter and Twitterless.

Quitter is somewhat useful in that it tells you the last tweet you posted before someone unfollowed you. This, however, may not be the reason they unfollowed.

I’ve used both services and I’ve decided they don’t really serve my personal needs. I prefer to just let people come and go on Twitter, and not worry too much about the why.

But perhaps these will be useful to you.

These are all good suggestions. I would add another one to an enterprise version. We have 5,000 customers and I have only managed to find around 30 of them on Twitter. Now I don’t have time to search for all 5,000 people individually but I would pay to have Twitter run my customer database against theirs and give me a list of our customers who are using Twitter (based on email address) and automatically follow them for me.

This would be so simple and would really add value to all those companies who are using Twitter primarily for business purposes.

I’ve posted today on how I’d like to figure out a way to keep the DM channel clear of auto generated clutter so the value of this back room discussions can unfold naturally. My sense is that a two tiered system of allowing a follow and then allowing a DM might do the trick…As is, the 20 to 50 “thanks for following me” messages that fill that channel are bothersome and make it cumbersome to track the meaningful exchanges.

Great post, Samir. While I second Mark’s comment that most of the features you suggested are available as 3rd party options, Twitter still has the upper hand,if they do it right. If an enterprise edition has some/most of those best features integrated without the API calls, it would definitely be worth paying for from a business perspective.

One of the others to add is from @scobleizer in a tweet this morning:

“I would pay for a “pro” version of Twitter or Facebook or FriendFeed. Give me REAL DM features. Worth $10 a month for me.” http://twitter.com/Scobleizer/status/1053278897 I have never understood why Twitter wants us to spend time @ gmail.

This would be *far* more valuable than the above mentioned items which, yes, I can easily get from third party apps.

Great post. The team @brightkit (www.brightkit.com) has been working hard on a lot of the features mentioned in this post.

With BrightKit, you can manage multiple Twitter profiles and add editors, pre-schedule tweets, and measure your success with integrated analytics.

We’re pushing a release today that has a boatload of new features as well. Please drop by and take a look.

Thanks for all the comments everyone! In reference to how there are third party applications for some of the features, it really comes down to the fact that I’d happily pay a small fee to NOT have to use 3rd party apps. Why not have Twitter give an entire microblogging suite at a small price?

I agree that twitter could add this, but is this the low hanging fruit for them? Twitter has had great innovation through their API, and amazing usage. By competing with popular 3rd party apps they will loose developer support. Why not monetize on API functionality, and targeted advertising into messages?

@Ryan Holmes – The problem I have with targeted advertising in messages is that it’s intrusive. I see absolutely no future in advertising on social media. [You can read a post I wrote about it "Social Network Advertising is a Waste of Time"].

Also, if you try to charge developers for API functionality, wouldn’t Twitter have just shot itself in the foot? I think most people are developing apps because they’re free. You’re better of charging for extra functionality on the site for those that want it, instead of charging people for something that they already (a free API).

Some great suggestions here, not that I’d like to pay for a premium membership, but having more control and stats over your account, your followers and your tweets would be very valuable for any twitter-user.

You can use quitter to be notified when and who unfollows.

I agree with Ryan. There is such a need for marketing companies to monitor twitter conversations (plus the need for metrics). An API plus backend metric gathering system would be something worth paying for with clients that rely on consumer conversation.

Page customization would be huge… being able to market your corporate brand in a more compelling way would be very useful… agreed also that enhanced stats are also a great idea, I’d also like to be able to customize welcome and thank-you messages to people as the subscribe and unsubscribe. And also, how about providing more widgets for embedding on blogs or your corp webpage… I’d like that.

@gletham / @gisuser

@Samir advertising is only beneficial if it’s relevant, contextual, and mildly un-intrusive. I have been really impressed with the results we get from splitweet. The 2.0 crowd seems to be down on advertising, but don’t want to pay. Pretty tough dilemma for SN properties. Ultimately we both agree they will need to have a revenue stream, and I think advertising is around to stay.

Cost per API could be done on a tiered basis set around additional functionality, or volume. This way Twitter will step on less toes than destroying startup API builders audience by incorporating the features.

Ultimately I think twitter is a great infrastructure, do they want to mess with that?

@Ryan Another thing to keep in mind is sometimes companies don’t want a third party application tracking the data. Some corporate brands might trust Twitter with the information, but I don’t know if I’d trust joe schmo with what I’m tracking, terms I’m targeting, and where I’m getting followers from.

@Glenn Yeah, page customization would be great. The current background only customization is not nearly robust enough for branding. @ScottMonty does a pretty good job, but I can imagine most companies want more usability.

Don’t forget the ability for more than one author to post to one account – all designated users could be logged into the same account at the same time and handle customer care issues simultaneously. This would remove the burden from one person (like poor ol’ Comcast Frank).

@Kari self promotional again, but brightkit.com does that too. You can assign as many editors to an account as you like, and boot them out if you like. ;)

I suppose, if they could find a way to analyse it, the best thing they could divulge is: not only who is following a particular entry, but WHY!

@Kari That’s a great idea! Thanks for the insight. I hadn’t even though about that. [BTW Anyone who reads this comment and isn't following Kari, you're missing out @KariRippetoe]

Wow, only 19 comments so far. This blog sucks, not really, but I want to stay on the conversation, then there are 100 emails in my inbox.

I just want to say that I would pay for a desktop client and stats. i think that is a perfect idea

Good post Samir; I’d definitely pay for additional features if it were “reasonable”. I’d like stats on my profile and another sig link and am open for any suggestions Twitter deems beneficial / productive.

Thanks Bloggeries! Twitter has definitely become an important part of consumer communications in the digital world. By charging for extra features, you don’t alienate the normal user, but you give extra features to those of us that are interested. You could even make the pricing plan tiered, while maintaining a free version that has all the current features.

I totally agree with the thought of paying for additional features. One that I’d like to see incorporated is the use of a mybloglog type of widget.

Another thing I’d be glad to pay for is the ability to imbed a limited amount of key words in a tweet.

I am using socialtoo.com for daily follow/unfollows but would gladly pay twitter a nominal amount of money for a service like this.

In case the Twitter powers-that-be read this, I’d gladly pay for such a suite as well. I’m using several third party platforms for these extra functions. One problem I see in the short term is it seems Twitter needs to focus on tweaking their API to make it work consistently well before developing a suite with similar functionality. They’ve fixed many of their scalability and downtime issues, now if they can just perfect some of the backend functionality related to these tasks, I think they’ll be good to go.