It seems that everyone is talking about Twitter and how incredibly useful it is but I don’t buy it.  I am all for simple and clean interfaces, I mean honestly it’s what made Google so popular.  However, a little bit of depth could go a long way into making Twitter one of the most useful social tools the web has ever seen.

To Tweet or not to Tweet?

I love coffee, I really do.  In fact I love coffee so much I even have a blog about different blends that I like.  Twitter allows me to access thousands of people with which I can send a simple post on the new flavor that I am trying out this morning if I so choose to.  But I won’t.  Why you may ask?  Because who gives a flip about what blend of coffee I like? You know who cares about what type of coffee I like?  Coffee lovers.  Now I could spend a lot of time trying to find people who are interested in coffee and communicate with them about it, but who has time to do something like that?  Furthermore, coffee is only one of the many things that I like.  I also like Indie music.  Say I want to send all the Indie lovers out there my newest find?  Sure, but they will also be getting updated on what’s giving me my current caffeine buzz.

Give us some categories for crying out loud!

Most of the time, I really don’t care if someone is going out to dinner with their girlfriend/boyfriend or anything of that nature.  If I want to see what my friends are doing that night I should be able to simply click the “general” tab and happily watch as the list populates itself with random Tweets about their awesome plans for the night.  If I am looking for new and ever so tasty coffee blends that I should try, then I should be able to click the “food and drink” category, type in the tag “coffee” and drink away.  In other words, I should be allowed to view what I want, when I want and not have to wade through mountains of useless Tweets to get there.

Is this possible?

Yes! The technology is already there.  All Twitter needs to do is look at sites like Delicious with their awesome tagging system.  By doing this, they can narrow down the virtually limitless categories to only a few main ones, thus keeping the simple nature of the interface.  They could also make categories an optional section so people can choose whether or not to use it.  Now I have a choice.  I could post my coffee blend to my whole list so that everyone can enjoy it or I can post it to the 50 or so friends who actually care and could use the information.  More importantly, this can help me if I want more exposure to my blog.  Now if my fellow coffee connoisseurs want to learn more about the blend I mentioned they can simply go to my blog and find out all about it. This is not to say I don’t love Twitter.  I think its simplicity is one of its greatest facets.  However, I do think the program could use a little depth so that those of us who want to narrow down our Tweets to more important information, are allowed to do so.

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