Ev Williams: “Twitter is too hard to use”

If you’re a Twitter user, you’ve probably had a moment where someone you know has complained that they “don’t get” what the service — even if they signed up, they couldn’t figure out what to do, who to follow, and so on. Twitter chief executive Ev Williams said today that the company is trying to address this problem.
“Twitter is too hard to use,” he said while speaking at Chirp, Twitter’s developer conference in San Francisco. He later added, “We’ve known this for a long time, but it was growing too fast for us to address these issues.”
For example, he showed a Google search where he started typing in “I don’t get” — the second suggested search (after “I don’t get drunk I get awesome”) was “I don’t get Twitter.” And Twitter was the only product on that list.
Now, however, Twitter has created a new “on-boarding” team, whose goal is “getting users from awareness to engagement,” Williams said. The team revamped the sign-up process, which has increased retention by 20 percent, it has redesigned the Twitter homepage, and there is more to come.
These efforts are probably important to assuring growth beyond Twitter’s already-impressive already numbers, so it grows to become a product for a truly mass audience, and also makes money from that audience through advertising.
Tags: Chirp
Companies: Twitter
People: Ev Williams