My talk at Twitter's Chirp developer conference on April 15, 2010.
Talk description:
Enabling users to sign up with Twitter is a nice first step but it's just the beginning of turning those users into active users of your site. Learn about how we think about onboarding users at Twitter and some ways in which you can use Twitter Connect and the Twitter graph to help get your users going more quickly.
3. What’s on Tap
• Hashtag for Questions: #chirponboard
• Who’s this guy?
• What is a “user”?
• Making a ladder of engagement
• Curious -> Casual -> Committed
• Getting your committed users to help
4. Josh Elman / @joshelman
• Joined Twitter in October (before half the company)
• Product Manager for Onboarding
• Before Twitter:
• Worked on and launched Facebook Connect
• Product at Zazzle and LinkedIn
• Wrote some Windows apps
15. Have questions about users?
location U.S. only
contact opt-in for email
history signed up > 30 and < 60 days ago
activity logged in 10+ days of the past 30
missing no logins first 7 days
(excluding signup on first day)
45. Art & Design Music
Books News
Business Politics
Charity Science
Entertainment Sports
Family Staff Picks
Fashion Staff Picks for Haiti
Food & Drink Technology
Funny Travel
Health Twitter
60. FOLLOW US BY TEXTING 40404 WITH:
twitter.com SevillaTapasSD
61.
62.
63.
64.
65. New users are 3x
more likely to add
friends if they are
suggested
66. New users are 3x
more likely to add
friends if they are
suggested
Dormant users 4x
more likely to re-
engage if given social
motivation
Source: rapleaf.com
67. “
Good design isn’t about making
decisions for your users, it’s
about making those decisions
irrelevant.
@rands — 11:12am Feb 16th 2010
credit: nerovivo on Flickr
72. Closing Thoughts
1. Measure the right things - regular users
2. Never hesitate to ask your users
3. Lean on your committed users - they love you
already
73. Closing Thoughts
1. Measure the right things - regular users
2. Never hesitate to ask your users
3. Lean on your committed users - they love you
already
4. Look to the numbers, but don’t live by them
74. Closing Thoughts
1. Measure the right things - regular users
2. Never hesitate to ask your users
3. Lean on your committed users - they love you
already
4. Look to the numbers, but don’t live by them
5. Have fun and make it fun!
75. Closing Thoughts
1. Measure the right things - regular users
2. Never hesitate to ask your users
3. Lean on your committed users - they love you
already
4. Look to the numbers, but don’t live by them
5. Have fun and make it fun!
• Hashtag for Questions: #chirponboard
Editor's Notes
Title Slide.
&#x2022; &#x201C;let&#x2019;s get to it&#x201D;
&#x2022; From Summmize
&#x2022; Search, platform (might remember API Group)
&#x2022; OAuth (sorry) - xAuth/cash-for-guns?
&#x2022; International (translation, char counting, twitter-text)
&#x2022; Before the technical stuff a little info on why you should be interested.
&#x2022; the main reason: Users
It&#x2019;s a progression and en evolution.
We know that once we get users engaged, they're crazy engaged.
Twitter is the first source they check, or the first place they think of to share something interesting
Magnets: what attracts users to your app
Hooks: what interests them and keeps them coming back
Glue: what keeps them sticking around
How many of you watch LOST?
polarizing
those who started watching the show early, more engaged
those who joined halfway in, less so - context, character development, back story
Art of the RECAP: recap episodes to catch up new viewers, pop-up repeats, Previously on LOST
Joining Twitter: entering the middle of a conversation
context, characters, moving stream - hard to jump in and feel immediately comfortable.
Real world example: Getting a drivers license. Technically, it&#x2019;s kind of a pain. But you&#x2019;re willing to go through it all because you have clear motivation. You know why you want to drive, so you&#x2019;re willing to slug through the how.
Real world example: Getting a drivers license. Technically, it&#x2019;s kind of a pain. But you&#x2019;re willing to go through it all because you have clear motivation. You know why you want to drive, so you&#x2019;re willing to slug through the how.
Real world example: Getting a drivers license. Technically, it&#x2019;s kind of a pain. But you&#x2019;re willing to go through it all because you have clear motivation. You know why you want to drive, so you&#x2019;re willing to slug through the how.
Casual users may often make up your largest group. They are potentially your largest, yet most volatile group. They are on the cusp of either advancing to committed, or giving up because they don&#x2019;t see the point.
a Learning curve, despite its simplicity
b Early adopters vs mainstream
c path to discovering the value
d finding people is hard, finding topics is harder
e strange syntax (@, RT, DM, #, bit.ly)
f fragments of conversations
g conceptual level: it's not like Facebook or LinkedIn where you need symmetrical relationships
In catering to casual users...
Connect them with relevance ASAP. This is Twitters BSOD.
Avoid the BSOD: not the blue screen of death from Windows. In Web Apps, this is the Blank Screen of Death
Hindsight is 20/20.
37 Signals does a pretty good job of avoiding the blank screen for new users.
For screens that don&#x2019;t yet have any content, or even for features of an app that require upgrading to use, they try not to show you a blank screen, but rather, a view into how this screen could look once it has content on it. Gives you ideas, prevents you losing interest.
The old SUL (what it attempted to solve, the issues it created, lack of transparency, select all)
Our lesson: Don&#x2019;t solve problems with a solution that creates more problems.
Next slide: Sometimes lessons like trying to think ahead, or considering the impact of careless actions can only be learned in hindsight.
Users now choose each source they follow, one at a time, rather than the mass-select-all followings from the original SUL.
Real world example: Getting a drivers license. Technically, it&#x2019;s kind of a pain. But you&#x2019;re willing to go through it all because you have clear motivation. You know why you want to drive, so you&#x2019;re willing to slug through the how.
These are our high-frequency consumers and/or publishers. Our self-made evangelists and promoters, our trend-setters. These are the users who can reach out to others, create curiosity or awareness, and drive engagement on lower rungs of the ladder.
We don&#x2019;t market or advertise. Instead, we provide tools for users to promote themselves on twitter (like widgets, buttons,
also effective for another category of users:
comatose: dormant users who signed up, then disappeared.
Reasons: didn&#x2019;t see value, friends weren&#x2019;t here, couldn&#x2019;t find anything interesting.
Many more of their friends are on Twitter now - experimenting with ways to reach out to comatose
Speaking of removing features or keeping them out:
Love this quote: Michael Lopp, Eng Dir @ Apple.
What if this decision didn&#x2019;t matter? What if we could remove this decision completely?
