I asked a question of my Twitter followers “How are you reading this tweet/accessing Twitter right now” and the results aren’t surprising.
At the time of writing this blog post, not one person has selected Desktop Computer/Laptop as an option, which is what I thought would be the case. Is it time to say goodbye to Twitter on the web?
Unlike Facebook, where you’ve got a plethora of content to look at on both desktop and mobile devices, Twitter’s web UI leaves a lot to be desired.
The look and feel of the Twitter feed, the navigation to your DM’s, @mentions and such is great, but the “Moments” feature doesn’t transfer well from the app to the desktop. Look at that on the app, you swipe left and right to go back and forth – on desktop, you have to just scroll down, sometimes it feels like forever.
And with the immediacy of Twitter, I feel it is much better suited as a mobile platform. Perhaps it’s website could be used prominently to just showcase tweets from a variety of different users – celebrities, news/sport/travel organisations, similar to that of it’s sister site Periscope. You could even select your country and find all the popular tweets from that country.
The decent thing about Twitter’s web presence is the ability to easily see what’s trending. This is most prominent when compared to sites such as Facebook, who have it somewhat hidden. The ability to see something trending, click on it, and get those tweets on your screen within a couple of clicks is great.
Plus, and I should have made this an option in my poll, most people probably use third party apps. They may use Tweet Deck to manage multiple accounts from their desktop or even third party apps on mobile. (Twitter, if you’re reading this, you need to sort out your Mac OS Twitter app).
I mostly use Twitter on my mobile via the official app. There’s nothing wrong with it. The app works well; it’s immediate and I find it easier to see what’s happening, keep up with and tweet in general. I rarely use the web version – only very occasionally, once a month, if that.
So providing everyone accesses Twitter through their smartphones/tablet devices, is it time they either scrap the website and make it a showcase? A showcase of profiles, moments & tweets instead of being able to login and tweet?
Twitter’s users have started to grow steadily after a dip. I for one enjoy the immediacy of Twitter and using it on my phone, that’s where I use it 95% of the time. In fact, the only thing that Twitter still need to consider, regardless of if people use the website or apps, is an “edit” button…
This article first appeared on ianpinnell.co.uk