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<aside> 🆕 [Updated 03/06/2021] Looks like Twitter has implemented this feature! Read more: https://twitter.com/wongmjane/status/1364992322975330304?s=21
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<aside> 🔥 [Updated 08/2/2020] Part 0: I recently attended Twitter's Q2 Earnings call to update myself on the company's current strategic direction before competing in #BattleoftheCamps, a hackathon run by Twitter's university recruiting initiative. In the earnings call, I learned about Twitter's interest in looking into a subscription-based monetization model. Following this newfound information from the executive team, at #BattleoftheCamps, I collaborated with my amazing team to create Twitter GeoTool: a robust tool to help advertisers and others gain real-time information about what's #trending in a specific location, about a specific topic, anywhere in the world. This tool would be offered to advertisers/others on a subscription basis, as the goal was to create a new revenue stream for the Twitter platform in lieu of the company's interest in a subscription-based model. You can learn more about our project here, see the code here, view our slide deck here, or try it out yourself here. We were honored to be a category prize winner!
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Note: This case study has been kept brief and concise in the interest of time for the reader. Please visit "Part 5: Going Forward (and looking back)" for an overview of reflections and next steps.
Overview of the Twitter iOS Mobile Application
Twitter's iOS mobile application publicly launched in July of 2006. The mobile application is the platform's primary product and is invested in more than the platform's website. In Q3 2019, there were 145 million active daily users on the platform, with 80% of usage stemming from mobile devices.
Potential People Problem
I have been a Twitter user since July of 2014, the beginning of my high school quadrennial. Today, I am a rising junior at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and my network of followers now includes my professors, my official college account, and various other professional connections. I want to continue to utilize Twitter as a continuous live stream of my everyday thoughts, as I did back in July of 2014, but direct my "thoughts" toward different audiences. I believe the Twitter platform is missing a herding capacity.
Current Solutions
Twitter's current iOS mobile platform provides users with the opportunity to converse with like-minded people through (i) showing you tweets liked by users you are following, (ii) showing you the users that users you are following, (iii) Topics, and (iv) Hashtags. Each of these solutions provides a Twitter user with a glimpse into the content they may be interested in but does not create a formula solution for balancing multiple audiences + interacting with personalized content. (v) Direct Messages are also an existing solution on Twitter, but pull users away from Twitter's main feature, writing a tweet to express a thought.
Existing Platform Features in the Realm of Personalized Content & Private Networks
User Research
Objective: To understand and identify key pain points in Twitter's user experience in terms of individually conversing with multiple audiences on one platform.