Dave Winer’s list of “must have” features for a twitter-killer:
So here’s the list of must-have features:
1. Reliability. Twitter still has trouble dealing with high-flow events like last night’s SuperBowl. Lots of Fail Whales. So if Google is able to offer reliability, no matter how much of an advantage Twitter’s installed base is, it won’t matter. When Twitter goes down everyone will reassemble on Glitter.
2. Enclosures. Can you imagine if you couldn’t enclose a picture or an MP3 with an email message? Why do we jump through so many hoops just to tweet a picture?
3. Open architecture metadata. Let developers throw any data onto a status message, giving it a name and a type, and let everyone else sort it out. It would result in an explosion of creativity.
4. Relationships with hardware vendors. I still want a one-click Twitter camera. If I can’t have it from Twitter, I’ll take it from Google.
5. No 140-character limit. I debated this one with myself. At first I compromised and said okay let’s have a 250-character limit, or a 500-character limit. But I really don’t want a limit. If I want to write short status messages, no problemmo. We’ve already made the cultural transition. We know how to do it. But sometimes a thought just can’t be expressed in 140 characters. No one is wise enough to know what the limit is, so let’s just not have one.
6. No URL-shorteners. I’ve explained this so many times. They’re stupid and ugly and they hurt the web. I like it when developers take the time to craft their URLs so they make sense to users. That’s all the shortening we really need and all we should have.
I actually disagree somewhat with #5 & #6, but a conversation for another time.
To that list, I would add:
7. Mode. Am I at work? Am I at lunch. Some sort of simple flag / notation that shows my & others “mode” context would be great.
8. No character penalty for #tag characters (assuming limit stays at 140 or 180 to match global sms standards).
9. Location embedded in tweet. With ability to opt out (or in), of course.
10. Ability to toggle to a threaded message view, based on tags and/or @replies.
How about you? What is in your “twitter killer”?
Bill Johnston 
One response to “Twitter Killer: Must-have Features”
Wow, those are some cool features. Hopefully in seeing Google Buzz today you weren’t too disappointed. I have never thought of it in terms of Google playing the trump on Twitter. It seems like they are trying to be more of an intelligent aggregator. A month or two I sat down and brainstormed some features that I would love to see Twitter release over the next year http://bit.ly/c1Isbh . Some are probably out there at this point.
Anyway, I have completely dived into Google Buzz yet but look forward to checking it out in more detail!