Things Twitter should have

A few things about Twitter have been irritating me recently and this has everything to do with its lack of versatility. Twitter’s alert function, which can syndicate “tweets” to any third party device or application (Mobile, Facebook, etc.), leaves much to be desired in terms of customising its functionality. For one thing, I would like to have the ability to send only specific tweets to my cellphone, while I’d like the rest to remain via Instant Messenger (IM) or even on the website itself.

For example, I would like to send all the tweets directed at me to my cellphone, so when any tweet has “@mkarim” in it, that’s the one I want sent to my phone. I would also like to be able to tweak whose tweets I’d like to send where — at the moment the only functionality it provides is that of either updating via a cellphone/IM or not.

Another thing that’s missing is groups. I’d like to be able to tweet to certain groups of people and not necessarily everyone. Twitter should have sorted its problems with going down all the time, and that of IM (although this has only been partially restored). In terms of innovating itself and going above and beyond to streamline functionality, the service is severely lacking.