5 Things I Hate About Twitter

There are many lists and reviews out there praising Twitter and how great it is, listing the numerous reasons you should be on it.  While I think Twitter is a great service and has its many uses, there are five things I absolutely hate about Twitter.  These five things need to be improved and/or fixed as soon as possible.

The first thing I think Twitter needs to improve is their search.  It is absolutely horrendous – it’s not relevant to your query.  All Twitter search currently does is spit out the latest tweets with those keywords.  Often times keywords may have multiple meanings and/or different contexts and in that the search is even more irrelevant.

The second thing I think Twitter needs to improve is their UI.  Their current user interface (which may be revamped soon) does not match their current feature set.  I personally would like to see something more Tweetdeck-like on Twitter.com.  If you look at Seesmic Web, they are doing a very good job with a web-based client.

The third thing that Twitter needs to fix as soon as possible is the inability to delete multiple direct messages at once.  That should be such a basic feature/function.  Even email (which can be considered the most primitive form of communication on the web) will allow me to delete multiple emails at once through a web-based or desktop client.  Any forum software such as Invision Power Board or vBulletin will allow you to delete multiple direct messages from your user control panel.  Why not Twitter?  I shouldn’t need a third party service to delete multiple direct messages.

The fourth thing that I think Twitter needs to improve is user discovery.  What do I mean by that?  Well, I think I have reached the point on Twitter where I can no longer find anyone else to follow and I know there are other people out there whose tweets I would have an interest in reading.  The problem is it’s impossible (almost) to find them.  The best way I have found to discover new people is to go through people I follow lists of followers and hand pick people who I think are interesting.  While that works, it’s tedious and requires a lot of time and work.  I want a system which would recommend people to me similar to Facebook or MySpace’s friend suggestions.

The fifth thing I would like to see Twitter do is add the ability to filter tweets somehow.  Most people will typically follow people who talk about things they are interested in and so on.  So for me, when an Apple event or an event such as CES occurs I am inundated with tweets about the same exact thing.  There is only so many times I would like to read the same article or information on the iPad.  It is like being an echo chamber at times.

And lastly, will Justin Bieber ever stop trending on Twitter?