Just like every new social site, Twitter’s user base evolved from the initial ‘geek’ population. It has now become a fad among businesses and celebrities. As more tech portals continue to harp on the importance of a social media presence, there is a growing feeling among the general population that a Twitter account is a must-have – without it, they are a nobody. So now, everybody has jumped onto the Twitter bandwagon but the majority of users are not really sure what to do once they find themselves in the world of tweets. Beyond micro-blogging about themselves, following numerous brands and famous people, what do most of the users do on Twitter? Twitter loses out to Facebook in this aspect, which is more of a social network where friends share images, play games, and even access other apps. Beyond a text box that lets you share 140 characters of text at a time and re-tweeting and following, Twitter folks don’t really get around to doing much. To make matters worse, the rising popularity of Pinterest is also making a dent in Twitter’s fan base. Pinterest lets you share information visually – while users have to type out your thoughts and opinions on Twitter,. With Pinterest, they can pin and share images on their virtual pinboards. And let’s face it, pictures do speak a thousand words, whereas a tweet comes in just 140 characters. While Twitter still remains a great platform to get the latest updates about trends in the world of news, it needs to rethink the platter it proffers to keep users hooked. It sorely misses out on the interactive experience that Facebook provides its users, where an average user can spend any number of hours listening to music, chatting with friends, play games, or basically just hang out, virtually speaking. As Twitter’s mobile apps continue to rise in popularity, it would be great to see some form of games that Tweeple can play with each other. It would also be more interesting to convert Twitter into a more visual platform, with more easy image-sharing options where followers can easily comment or reshare. This would easily give Twitter an upper hand over Pinterest as the former can leverage its large user base unlike the relatively newer social media tool. Until then, for me, Twitter will remain just a place to know about what’s trending all over the world and not much else. Maybe someday soon, I will get to see Twitter becoming a more fun place to spend time on though. Till then it’s only waiting time.
