Twitter just closed a $400 million Series G round and simultaneously reached 100 million users.
We set out to see if people actually knew what they were doing on the Twittersphere, and if the site was easy to use. Congressman Anthony Weiner’s career ended because he did not understand how to send a direct message. We discovered the man is not alone, as we watched testers from our panel expose several key usability issues.
1. Some users don’t understand how to send a direct message
When we asked users to send 3 of their recent followers a direct message, we learned that users are unclear the difference between direct messages on Twitter, @mentions, and replies.
A direct message is a private message sent directly to someone who follows you (limited to 140 characters) by clicking the message button on their profile.
One tester wrongly thought he could send a direct message to a user by starting a tweet off with @Person, a mistake that cost Andrew Weiner his job. Tweets that start off with @Person, only show up in @Person’s timeline (provided they are following the sender), but are still completely visible from the sender’s profile.
Twitter should clarify who can see your tweets, and better define their terminology.
2. Can’t add people to a list when you’re in a list
Users had to leave the list they created to add other users. We also learned that some users incorrectly thought they had to be friends with someone to add them to a list.
3. Users had to Google how to snag the URL of a Tweet
If you want to point other users to a tweet, or point someone outside of Twitter directly to a specific tweet – you have to know the secret. (Sorry, you can’t simply click on the tweet.)
This user voices extreme frustration when after 5 minutes of troubleshooting, she finds out from a Google search that she had to click on the *timestamp* to get the link. In her written follow-up response she adds that this was extremely non-intuitive and that she wanted to pull her hair out!
4. Difficult for users to add a comment to a retweet
For people who want to Retweet someone else’s tweet, but add their own spin, Twitter makes it tricky. (Perhaps you want to add “Love it!” or “Thanks!” and show the world what amazing tweet you are referring to.) Twitter, however, does not let you add anything to a Retweet. Users instead have to manually retweet using the “RT” term and copying the tweet in reference.
According to the user in the video above, “It bothers me every single day that I want to retweet and add my own take on something… I don’t understand why they can’t get that straight.”
5. Unclear how to sort tweets by most recent because of bad terminology
Twitter shows Top tweets by default in search results, which favors popular tweets that have many gotten retweeted many times. To view by most recent, users must click the down arrow next to Top and select “All” in the dropdown menu.
When users view “All” and see one older tweet on top (typically a sponsored tweet), it threw them off. Even though every tweet below the promoted tweet was in reverse chronological order, users did not believe they were viewing tweets by most recent.
Twitter should just change the label “All” to “Recent.” Users next went to “Refine Search” to attempt to search by most recent, which was of no use to them.
6. Searching for people sends users in zig-zags
We asked users to search for certain people. Users all used the main search bar, not the “Who to follow” link. Users did not immediately realize they had to look in the right column for people results when they pressed enter.
Users said that they expected to see results below, with the ability to filter by people only in search.
7. Hard to ID the retweeter
Many times, users are interested to know who retweeted something. When people retweet something, the original tweeter’s image and real name shows up with their tweet. Twitter only reveals the handle of the retweeter in the timeline, which often is not be their name, and is not a clickable link to quickly find out who they are.
8. Twitter failed to accept input for 3 out of 4 testers (It’s not just you)
The company recently bragged that they are faster than an earthquake. However, we observed the site stall, and users had to refresh their browser, at least once during their 15 minute test. Here are two examples below.
9. Twitter is difficult to navigate because features are decentralized
Users were unclear which features were accessible from either Home or from Profile. For instance, users can only access favorited tweets from their Profile, and can only view retweets from Home. The user below has no idea where he can view the tweet he just favorited.
Another user expected to be able to view tweets he had retweeted from his Profile, however users can only do this from Home.
While users can view their followers and who they are following from both their Profile and Home, there is no form field to send a tweet from their Profile. There was much back-and-forth to achieve simple tasks, and users found this frustrating.
It seems like Twitter should consider combining your profile into Home. If they really want to keep both separate, Twitter could let users tweet directly from their Profile.
10. Users want to know what they’ll see when they input a link
Users have to know they must add “http://” to urls in tweets or they will not be clickable once the tweet is posted. However, Twitter eliminates “http://www” when a tweet is posted, so if you mimicked others thinking the “.com” would simply convert your url into a link, you’d be sorry. Features should not be discovered by making mistakes.
Just type in “bit.ly” into search to see how many people made the mistake.
Twitter could have a field to input links, so users do not lose 7 characters (http://) that do not even get shown in the tweet.
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Twitter soared from handling 50 million tweets per day in February 2010 to a staggering 200 million this June. Dealing with this volume has been difficult, and many users experience temporary down times and throttled use. We hope the Twitter team is able to handle their own success, as well as continue to optimize features and improve design for ease of use.
Stay tuned for the next post on features people never use on Twitter and features people wish Twitter had. Click here if you want real people to test your site.
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