When someone replies to one of my tweets, I should not have to right click and open up a new tab with that tweet of mine to figure out what exactly that person replied to.
one area that’s still lacking is a good way to view conversations. Clicking on the “in reply to” links is tedious for long conversations. ..... Twitoaster’s speciality was the threaded conversation view it gave to tweets. ...... Another key focus of Twitoaster is tweet archiving. That’s another feature Twitter could definitely improve upon. Currently, thanks to Twitter’s search limitations, once a tweet is a couple of months old, it’s basically lost in the Twitter.com ether. If Twitter had a better archiving mechanism for old tweets, it could extend the life of them, and make them much more useful.
It is a good feeling. I call it my vision resonance. If I am not the one being read, I am in tune. This reminds me of when TechCrunch, several months back, published many private documents of Twitter. Twitter had its own iPhone 4 moment. One of the things that emerged from all that was that the Twitter team was talking about "a billion people on Twitter" around the same time I was talking about a billion people on Twitter at this blog. That was a good feeling. I felt like I had vision resonance.
David Karp is a New Yorker I hope to meet in person at some point, I am sure we will. We know too many people between us, the biggest being Fred Wilson himself. Wilson relishes Karp the way a VC ought to relish an entrepreneur.
A few months back - and if it has been less than that sorry, I have been on internet time, time moves faster online - when Tumblr raised its newest round of money, there was some talk from various quarters on the topic. I meant to read up on those thoughts and share my own thoughts in a blog post, and I just never got around to, I am doing now. But I have not had the chance to read those thoughts. That probably is a good thing for this blog post.
Google could not have done what Yahoo was doing really well: banner ads. Google came up with its own ad platform that spoke to the Google Search experience, and Google hit the jackpot with it. Similarly Facebook could not have done what Google did. (Facebook's Ad Space Is Different) Ads on Facebook needed to be able to climb the maze of people's social graphs. Social gaming needed a newer ad platform.
Look at how Twitter is rolling out its monetization efforts. They have introduced the concept of resonance.
The lesson from all these examples is that the monetization of Tumblr has to be unique to the Tumblr experience. And the Tumblr experience is different from the Twitter experience, it is different from the Facebook experience, it is different from the Wordpress/Blogger experience.
So what exactly is the Tumblr experience. Define. Then monetize.
An obvious thing would be to allow businesses to set up tumblogs: paid Tumblr accounts. They can run campaigns on their own outside of Tumblr to get people to show up on their tumblogs and to follow them on their own. It would be like people doling out their Twitter handles on non Twitter platforms. But if people are spending money on the Google platform to get people to their tumblogs, that is money that should have been Tumblr's. So.
You should be able to create a paid account for your business on Tumblr. And Tumblr should landgrab a small box on the top right of all tumblogs. Paid accounts would have the option to get their specific tumblogs or Tumblr posts listed there for money.
So I just put out a post about smartphones at my tumblog, maybe I will see an ad for smartphones.
And for a higher price tumblog posts that are clearly labeled Sponsored should be allowed to enter streams. This could get controversial. But there is the Twitter option where you only enter the steam when people actively search for certain terms.
Just like an ad on Twitter has to take the form of a tweet, an ad on Tumblr has to look like a tumblog post. And those posts have to compete. If you are not getting clicked upon, you are not being liked and reblogged, you lose your place in the stream, money could not get you back in. What's that word again? Resonance?
Advertising on Tumblr has to be in tune with the Tumblr experience.
Another way - perhaps a better way - would be to get the users of Tumblr to strive to earn badges and have each such badge sponsored by a major brand name. So if you can get 100 people to follow you on Tumblr, you earn the T100 badge sponsored by Ben & Jerry. Both the badge and the sponsor's logo get shown on your tumblog. The logo links to the sponsor's tumblog.
A third way would be to allow Tumblr users to buy virtual money at Tumblr with which they can buy each other gifts. You pay real money for fake money with which you buy gifts. Tumblr is the one you pay. Tumblr makes money. Get it?
Twitter is for real. I have felt that since February 2009 when @jobsworth covinced me to get on the train. Otherwise in 2008 and before I looked down upon the service. I was a full form blogger. 140 characters could not contain me.
Twitter does not have the buzz today that it had for the first half of last year. Following the same pattern, some of FourSquare's buzz is now dying out just when it is getting better and better as a business.
Twitter had major scaling issues last year. That was a high class problem to have. But it still should have walked and chewed gum at the same time. It should have scaled well and it should have added features as well.
My belief is that the best features have to be at Twitter.com itself. I have the Twitter ecosystem in high regards, but Twitter should buy or build the best of the breed.
What are some obvious features that Twitter lacks?
(1) A Four Column View
Just like I am for four or more native inboxes for my Gmail, I am for four columns for Twitter. You log in and the four columns are the default view. Save me clicks. (Reimagining The Inbox The Simple Way)
The Stream
The Inbox (@paramendra)
Direct Messages
Okay, so that's three, not four.
(2) Several Lists At Once
I want to be able to view my four favorite lists at once. I might create and follow tens of lists, but this would force me to think which my four top lists are. Give me one click on the right hand side that leads me to four columns that house my four lists.
(3) Threaded Conversations
When someone replies to one of my tweets, I should not have to right click and open up a new tab with that tweet of mine to figure out what exactly that person replied to. Again, save me clicks.
(4) Deleting 20 Direct Messages At Once
Just like I don't have to delete one email at a time, I don't want to have to delete one DM at a time. I want to be able to delete 20 DMs at a time. Select all, and delete. I also want to be able to unfollow 20 people at a time in my DM box. You sending me a DM I did not want is often a good reason for me to start unfollowing you. But if I have to unfollow one person at a time, you have the upper hand.
(5) The @ Reply Ninjas
My inbox is often flooded with people who will put my Twitter handle in a tweet and there will be no message in there, or some unwanted marketing message. Often times they will put my Twitter handle and that of 10 others. They got 10 people's attention, they think.
People who I don't follow, when they send me a tweet, instead of giving me the two regular options of reply and retweet, give me three options: reply, retweet, block person. A blocked person should not be able to show up in my inbox even if they put my Twitter handle into their tweet.
As the world looks to India to compete with China as a major source of new global economic growth, this country’s weak transportation network is stalling progress. ..... India must invest heavily in transportation to achieve a long-term annual growth rate of 10 percent — the goal recently set by the prime minister, Manmohan Singh. ..... the political realities of India’s clamorous democracy stand in contrast to the forced march that China’s authoritarian system can dictate for economic development. ..... A 40,000-mile, 150-year-old network, Indian Railways is often described as the backbone of this nation’s economy. And in fact it is moving more people and goods than ever: seven billion passengers and 830 million tons of cargo a year. ..... Political analysts say that the current railway minister, Mamata Banerjee, has been distracted by her party’s campaign to win elections in her home state of West Bengal. ..... migrant workers, for example, can travel from Mumbai to their homes in Bihar, 1,050 miles away, for 500 rupees ($11). ..... To subsidize passenger travel, the railways levy some of the highest freight tariffs in the world. India charges $395 to move a ton of freight one kilometer — four times what American companies charge and twice as much as in China. ..... the Delhi Metro, a 118-mile subway system.
Occasionally, she shouted back at her opponents, mostly older men, telling them to shut up and let her finish. ......... One of her campaigns forced Tata Motors, India’s largest auto company, to abandon a factory complex where it had planned to produce a new $2,500 car, the Nano. Tata has since moved the factory to Gujarat State, on the opposite coast of the country. ...... “But at the moment her main aim is to be chief minister of West Bengal.”
Indian Railways is the worlds largest employer and one of the biggest and busiest rail networks in the world, carrying some 17 million people and more than one million tonnes of freight daily. It was, however, until very recently, a loss-making organisation heading for bankruptcy. Starting his term in 2004 with a budget of just $200 million with which to save the national institution, Indian Railways Minister, Lalu Prasad engineered a dramatic turnaround. In 2007, Indian Railways revenues amounted to $6 billion. This impressive success story has also been featured in the textbooks of prestigious academic institutes worldwide as a case study. Minister Lalu Prasad is a key ally of India's governing coalition led by the Congress party. He was also the former Chief Minister of the state of Bihar which his Rashtriya Janata Dal party governed for 13 years until 2005.
Image via CrunchBase
