Loading Profile...
When is Twitter going to get groups?
I would love to be able to send certain messages only to certain sets of people through some sort of grouping functionality.
Like when I go to a conference, I want to be able to send certain messages only to other twitter friends who are also at that conference. A lot of my friends get really annoyed with me when I'm constantly twittering about an event they're not lucky enough to attend.
Do you guys have any plans to implement this or any other sort of grouping functionality? Is there a timeframe for this? How long do I have to wait?!
Like when I go to a conference, I want to be able to send certain messages only to other twitter friends who are also at that conference. A lot of my friends get really annoyed with me when I'm constantly twittering about an event they're not lucky enough to attend.
Do you guys have any plans to implement this or any other sort of grouping functionality? Is there a timeframe for this? How long do I have to wait?!
I’m anxious
30 people have this question
I have this question, too!
Tell me when someone answers.
The more people who ask this question, the more it gets noticed.
The more people who ask this question, the more it gets noticed.
The best answer from the company
-
Groups is definitely at the top of our requested feature list. I've learned that it means slightly different things to different people.
Lane - can you talk a bit about what you expect? For example, in the scenario described, is it your expectation that you'd set up a group at twitter.com called "WebGeeks" and then when you were at the conference you'd prefix posts with "g WebGeeks At registration and thinking about getting a drink?"
Is the group just an organizational element for you or should other people be able to address the group as well?
Would you want those posts made to be strictly access-controlled so that no one else except those you permit can see them, or is it just that folks shouldn't see them unless they visit your profile page.
Thanks for helping me flesh out what folks want from this. We've obviously got a lot of ideas ourselves, but more details about what folks expect are helpeful.
I’m thankful
The company and 5 other people say
this answers the question
The best answers from everyone
-
ok, i've been thinking a lot about this, and i've realized my take on groups and grouping is more nuanced than i initially presented here. i am not actually against fine-grained controls like we're discussing above, but i strongly disagree with framing them in the context of privacy. the issue isn't one of privacy, it's one of managing context and subtle shifts in personal identity.
here's my problem with most social systems: i am forced into the realization that, like the man says, i contain multitudes. or, at least a good number of mes. i am the person i am @ work versus the person i am @ home. the person i am @ a party versus the person i am @ a conference. the person i am in the morning versus the person i am @ night. i am a hell of a lot of different people, depending on time, depending on context, depending on mood, depending on expectation, and i switch between these constantly. but here's the kicker: i usually *don't have to think about it*.
we are all many people, and we have many faces, and we present them to the world @ the right times in every context -- except online, where we either are expected to be just one person, or are expected to "manage" who we are in relationship to other people in a clunky, boxy, one size fits all kind of way. so bizarre that the same place that allows so much of us out into the world in so many respects, that allows for such a dynamic presentation of self in general, in this one more socially explicit context we utterly obliterate our nuanced sense of being.
which leads me to my problem with, for example, vox. vox frames these broad concepts entirely around privacy, which continues the assumption that there's just one version of me (that i like to hide away. haha you can't see me!) but it's less explicit than that pretty much all of the time. this also explains why i gravitate towards the simplicity of a "conference" feature -- because that's, again, a context of use that i can identify, a suit i put on for a couple of days and then stuff back into the closet when it's over.
the setup goldtoe suggests above, my work context versus my afterwork context (the work me and the party me), makes a ton of sense when it's framed this way. but it'll fail if it's a) presented entirely as a "privacy" thing, which blunts the value, or b) requires *too much* explicit framing of who people are. so, again, i would ask you guys to think about lightweight and near-invisible ways of letting me subtly group people, rather than having me drop everybody into giant meatspace buckets. the less you make me think about who to invite, and the more you mimic my offline actions, the more likely i'm going to be to get value out of the conversation. and it's that conversation you want, right?
I’m overly verbose
7 people say
this answers the question
-
Okay, so we are talking about 3 kinds of groups: public groups you 'join' a la FB groups. Ad hoc groups users control whether via grouping management (Pownce) or tagging. And then we have context specific groups based on location (@ South Park, anyone want to walk to Philz?).
This hadn't occurred to me until this discussion.
10 people say
this answers the question
-
What about Consumating-style tagging of our contacts that we can later use for ad hoc groups? d satsifaction you guys rock! would notify all my contacts tagged satsifaction. The problem with Pownce style groups is that you set up a group and then it feels onerous to amend it. When did I last update it, etc? However, if I can simply tag new contacts (sf, for example) I've got more of a chance to keep a more accurate rolling foil ball of contacts.
I’m excited
5 people say
this answers the question
-
Well, now that you're making me *think* about it...
Personally, I'm not particularly interested in being able to create groups of people I can send certain subsets of messages to. That kind of fine-grained privacy management stuff drives me crazy on sites like Vox. Maybe I'm old-skool, but it feels like people in that environment are all about what they're hiding, not what they're sharing, and I prefer sharing. Hiding inhibits usage and growth, and it's lame like high school. Don't do it.
However, at a conference, something group-oriented totally makes sense. Something like "g webgeeks" would work for me if people could opt in to being part of "webgeeks" (or rather, "c sxsw") and then twitter would pay attention to the intersection of people subscribed to me on twitter and only send my update to them. similarly, I would only receive messages from people who were @ the conference if I set that as the conference I was attending. Actually, the g/c thing would get annoying -- I'd rather set and unset it as a global preference. If I'm @ the conference, I'm @ the conference, you know?
One reason I'm pushing for a "conference" feature rather than a "groups" feature is because I'd rather see you guys solve a specific problem that I and many others have run up against repeatedly, rather than trying to abstract out some sort of "groups" functionality that tries to please multiple use cases and ends up solving no problem @ all. Wouldn't want you to do that and lose the Twitter magic. And please please don't go all Vox multiple-levels-of-privacy. That'll just depress me.
You know what would totally solve this problem? Geolocation. If you knew where I was, and you knew who was near me, and you could do that intersection against the people subscribed to me (and I was subscribed to) on Twitter, you could just send to them,and voila -- instant conference management. Which would seem much further off if I hadn't seen a demo of Tom Coates' FireEagle recently. You guys should really talk to Tom about what he's up to...
I’m excited
7 people say
this answers the question
-
Inappropriate?Rumor has it that some kind of group functionality is next on the to-do list. But it looks like they've got a technical and business issues to work on first. I'm also curious how long this will take!
I’m excited
-
Inappropriate?Groups is definitely at the top of our requested feature list. I've learned that it means slightly different things to different people.
Lane - can you talk a bit about what you expect? For example, in the scenario described, is it your expectation that you'd set up a group at twitter.com called "WebGeeks" and then when you were at the conference you'd prefix posts with "g WebGeeks At registration and thinking about getting a drink?"
Is the group just an organizational element for you or should other people be able to address the group as well?
Would you want those posts made to be strictly access-controlled so that no one else except those you permit can see them, or is it just that folks shouldn't see them unless they visit your profile page.
Thanks for helping me flesh out what folks want from this. We've obviously got a lot of ideas ourselves, but more details about what folks expect are helpeful.
I’m thankful
The company and 5 other people say
this answers the question
-
Inappropriate?Well, now that you're making me *think* about it...
Personally, I'm not particularly interested in being able to create groups of people I can send certain subsets of messages to. That kind of fine-grained privacy management stuff drives me crazy on sites like Vox. Maybe I'm old-skool, but it feels like people in that environment are all about what they're hiding, not what they're sharing, and I prefer sharing. Hiding inhibits usage and growth, and it's lame like high school. Don't do it.
However, at a conference, something group-oriented totally makes sense. Something like "g webgeeks" would work for me if people could opt in to being part of "webgeeks" (or rather, "c sxsw") and then twitter would pay attention to the intersection of people subscribed to me on twitter and only send my update to them. similarly, I would only receive messages from people who were @ the conference if I set that as the conference I was attending. Actually, the g/c thing would get annoying -- I'd rather set and unset it as a global preference. If I'm @ the conference, I'm @ the conference, you know?
One reason I'm pushing for a "conference" feature rather than a "groups" feature is because I'd rather see you guys solve a specific problem that I and many others have run up against repeatedly, rather than trying to abstract out some sort of "groups" functionality that tries to please multiple use cases and ends up solving no problem @ all. Wouldn't want you to do that and lose the Twitter magic. And please please don't go all Vox multiple-levels-of-privacy. That'll just depress me.
You know what would totally solve this problem? Geolocation. If you knew where I was, and you knew who was near me, and you could do that intersection against the people subscribed to me (and I was subscribed to) on Twitter, you could just send to them,and voila -- instant conference management. Which would seem much further off if I hadn't seen a demo of Tom Coates' FireEagle recently. You guys should really talk to Tom about what he's up to...
I’m excited
7 people say
this answers the question
-
Inappropriate?Lane's suggestion is right on. Don't make me manage "groups", just let me set a location, or just an ad hoc named group, and just let me broadcast my new groupname via normal tweets. Or just let me create Twitter accounts on behalf of places or events like this:
andrew: "me @andrewsblockparty" //tells twitter where I am
andrew: "at my block party? Follow @andrewsblockparty today." //tweet to my friends asking them to follow my group
If I don't remember to disband this group manually, "andrewsblockparty" can just nudge me sometime after I stop sending messages to it: "still @andrewsblockparty?" -
Inappropriate?I'd like to second that thought. I don't so much want groups for tiny subsets of friends, but I'd like to be able to send messages by location or event - so like send a tweet to all the friends I have in Los Angeles asking if anyone wants to go see a movie without pestering all my friends in other cities. It would also be really useful for events and conferences when you are suddenly tracking and coordinating with people you never do on a regular basis, but only for a short term.
The biggest trick here will be the management - the Pownce set up blows so you don't want a system where I have to go through and manually add or remove every single person to a list, and then do that again every time I get a new friend. Groups should be maintained by the people in them, so for example I could chose to join the LA group, and then any friends who sent something to their LA group I'd get. Same thing for event's, I could join the SXSW group, and then leave it once I'm no longer there.
I’m excited
-
Inappropriate?Personally, I agree with the idea that explicit access controls are not always desirable and that things are more fun when public. However, there's a lot of people who want control over what gets shared.
There are some canonical cases where this makes sense. I want my friends but not my co-workers to know that I'm going out to get blitzed at 4p today.
When asked to define what Groups means, the most common interpretation has involved some notion of explicit control in which the user can say "only these people should see this."
There are ways to emphasize that content should want to be public, but I think some version of Groups for us would need to include access restrictions.
The Conference idea is one that I think is very exciting. Ad-hoc group formation that's based around an event is one of the more powerful potential uses of Twitter. I've not FireEagle but co-location is the right sort of idea.1 Comment Add a comment
This answers the question
-
Privacy is definitely a must. I use two twitter accounts just because I use it so much for a private group (my band, we all use it via SMS) but I say things I would like to keep within that context. And I use another account via Twitterific just for regular twitter usage. If i could have one account where I could address a private group like this : dg myGroup ... That would be awesome. The conferencing ideas are pretty great as well, maybe a mixture of both features? -
Inappropriate?Lane-
I think you're really on to something with the geolocation thing.
Maybe what Twitter should do is let you specific, when twittering, where you are in the world. I don't want to have to enter lat/long, so it'd be cool if twitter knew about named places so that I could just use the place name. The syntax could be short and simple, like "@bar Twittering about being at the bar".
Then, when my friends twitter from nearby, you can send me a message like "hey ryan, your friend lane is down at the bar, you should stop by and say hello."
I’m happy
-
Inappropriate?I can see the utility in traditional "closed" groups for access-controlled messages. But seriously, don't we have a bunch of other systems that solve this problem already (email, for instance)? The inherently public nature of Twitter seems to butt up against the notion of closed groups, except for those people who have friends-only updates.
Personally, I'm starting to think this sounds like it's becoming two separate features (feature *sets* really), one for ad-hoc organization and one for sending protected updates to a specific group of people that's set up ahead of time by the sender.
Personally, I also feel that a design review of the language is needed here, especially in terms of clarification about which of the two previous features ends up appearing first. "Groups" is a bad word for several reasons, not the least of which is that it's too vague to convey the meaning necessary to explain either concept.
I’m happy
-
-
Inappropriate?i understand that argument but can't shake my suspicion that it's a bad idea that will degrade your overall value proposition.
privacy management for groups isn't just going to change the way people interact with those groups -- it's going to change the way they interact with your entire system. it defines a context that affects perception, and perception massively affects use. it's like architecture, like the difference between walking into a conference hall and walking into a church, two big open rooms designed for a lot of people to congregate but totally different because of collective expectation. space defines relationships, real or virtual, and twitter is all about the relationships it defines, so perception matters.
as to being asked to define what "groups" mean, and responding in a way that suggests it's all about access control... speaking as someone who has done user research for years, and has seen the huge divide between what people say they want and what they actually want, i'm only too aware that the way one asks a question has a lot to do with how people answer it. my preference is to look to lived experience and actual need, which is where the conference/area idea comes from.
(speaking of, i love the simplicity and individual level of management/control inherent in both the models suggested above, both of which are totally additive to the existing experience.)
I’m anxious
-
Inappropriate?I very much agree that including the ability for people to restrict access to content changes the perception that folks have about creating content in general. I think, however, that it can be done without jeopardizing what makes Twitter special today.
For one thing, access controls already exist in Twitter, it's just much more coarse. Users who opt to be "protected" only share their updates with approved followers. The fact that you get updates from users of this type is almost entirely transparent to most folks' use of the product today.
But also, there's a larger point about accommodating user need. Your point about discerning the difference between what people say they want and what they want is fair. I think we need to do more to enable the types of experience you're talking about and the ad-hoc, location-based functionality that's been discussed should definitely be richer. After all, a lot of the uptake of Twitter can be pointed to as a result of the exposure at SxSW.
However, I'd argue there's fewer users who are interested in "Let me send messages to everyone that's at this place I'm at" and more who are into "Let me tell my friends but not my co-workers what I'm up to."
Fortunately, these ideas are not mutually exclusive. I think both (and more) can be accommodated.
I’m thankful
-
Inappropriate?What about Consumating-style tagging of our contacts that we can later use for ad hoc groups? d satsifaction you guys rock! would notify all my contacts tagged satsifaction. The problem with Pownce style groups is that you set up a group and then it feels onerous to amend it. When did I last update it, etc? However, if I can simply tag new contacts (sf, for example) I've got more of a chance to keep a more accurate rolling foil ball of contacts.
I’m excited
5 people say
this answers the question
-
-
-
Inappropriate?Okay, so we are talking about 3 kinds of groups: public groups you 'join' a la FB groups. Ad hoc groups users control whether via grouping management (Pownce) or tagging. And then we have context specific groups based on location (@ South Park, anyone want to walk to Philz?).
This hadn't occurred to me until this discussion.
10 people say
this answers the question
-
Inappropriate?True. Good observation, Brian. And they all have their place in different contexts. The question is, what would work best for Twitter and it's users and what they hope to achieve together.
I’m happy
-
Inappropriate?Much as I think tagging is good. I think this case, I' would go with the I'm lazy crowd. I do not want to have to work harder than I have to follow events. That's part of the beauty of Twitter right now and part of the reason why I'm more inclined to use it vs. Jaiku or Pownce.
1 person says
this answers the question
-
Inappropriate?I'm over here at Lane's suggestion from a request that I had around twitter having news events. Which now that I think about it more is a special use case.
http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/to...
Another way to look at what Lane has described above could be the lifespan of a group. I would put forth 3 possible cases:
1) Breaking news event i.e. MN. I'm not there but would still like to know about it.
2) Conference. I'm there and want local information
3) Groups. Something/interest that I want to follow.
So while I'm usually a big fan of geo and LBS, in this case, I would not necessarily center around it.
I agree with not have multiple levels of security. Twitter is great because of it's simplicity and I would hate for it to lose that.
BTW I would love to see a demo of FireEagle. =) It certainly seems very interesting and I am curious about the implementation.
I’m excited
1 person says
this answers the question
-
Inappropriate?Jaiku does this if you have a Nokia. I saw a demo of this when Scoble sat down with the Jaiku guys. That's one thing I think Jaiku has done well is to capitalize on some advanced mobile features but the problem is that I'm still on a stone age Treo 700P.
I think I have mobile envy.
EMPLOYEE