Twitter Communities seems to be a hot topic right now, or at least it has to be.
More specifically, it’s worth discussing how Twitter goes about enhancing user engagement through Communities for more private Tweet discussions, as well as other experiments that could eventually change your Tweeting behavior. Tweet Communities seem to be the most obvious element on this front since it’s already live.
While Twitter has yet to share any official Communities stats as of late, it did mention that its biggest Communities have all been created in recent weeks. So while it may not yet be a major element of the Twittersphere, it is growing.
Community-Growth
Twitter continues to address key problems with Communities. During the launch, one glaring issue identified was in joining capacity – only those invited by current members would be allowed into groups. That, of course, vastly limited accessibility, but Twitter has since corrected the problem by adding a new option to ‘request to join’. It has also improved controls over both open and invite-only groups.
While certain problems persist with the current system (invite-limit currently set to five per member), improvements are being made. This gradual refinement will eventually facilitate more control over membership. On top of this, Twitter’s also adding a new member search option to help administrators primarily locate moderators. Twitter is also currently testing Communities search on the web to make group discovery and joining easier for users.
Improving discoverability remains a key focus, with a couple of bigger questions around engagement, and whether or not Twitter users care enough to share in more private, topic-focused groups. One issue in this respect is that most Twitter users have already curated their audience over time, choosing who they follow and posting specific subjects to further build said audience. With this, is there even a need for Communities at all?
The main use-case for Communities is to give users more options to discuss different subjects, as opposed to supposedly ‘confining’ conversations to specific topics. Twitter’s VP of consumer product Jay Sullivan explains:
“One of the things I hear from people is, ‘Hey, I read a lot of stuff. I’m not necessarily comfortable tweeting or don’t know when or why I should tweet. I would feel better if I was tweeting to a smaller community of people.”
This makes sense. For example, even if you really like American Football and follow all the NFL-related groups and channels, you may still not be overly confident about posting NFL content on your main Twitter account because the majority of your followers won’t be interested. Communities offer a level of solution on this front, along with another Twitter project.
The Wrap
Twitter continues to develop its set of existing and new conversation-based offerings, with ‘Facets’ and ‘Flocks’ being particular standouts among various other initiatives. Facets would allow users to Tweet under an alias or alternate Twitter persona, while Flocks allows for a niche-group creation for up to 150 members.
Respectively, each of these options basically centers on the idea of building groups, both large and small. While the true usefulness of these elements remains yet to be seen, there is a significant amount of opportunity waiting for Twitter if it can somehow manage to crack the variable Tweeting code, potentially changing the entire landscape of the app as we know it.
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