TC notes the extraordinary growth Twitter has seen since its initial inflection. This is a growth pattern I have never seen in terms of speed – not in the nearly 25 years I’ve been watching this industry.
I think this is both Twitter’s most important and dangerous phase of its young life. The retention problem must be addressed, and quickly. In my previous post about Twitter adding value to new users, I suggested Twitter incorporate some structure around its suggested users feature.
But with an inflection like this, I think it’s time to swallow hard and embrace some serious social media jujitsu. In short, Twitter should integrate Facebook Connect in its signup process, and offer it as a feature for current users.
If it were to do that, then every new user who is also on Facebook (and who is not, at this point?) would be able to instantly follow Facebook friends who are on Twitter. Integrate this with a Groups feature, and you’re proving value immediately.
Talking with Whrrl CEO Jeff Holden yesterday, I mentioned this idea (I have also been bouncing it off a number of folks over the past month or so). He countered that such a move might add too much value to Facebook, but I disagree. Facebook has won the first round of the social graph game. Twitter has far more to gain by leveraging Facebook right now.
And after all, they can always turn the feature off it they want to.
What do you think?