Thanks @nicholaschiang for the nice structure and emojis you used in your RFC proposal ticket.
Twitter RPG Background
The Twitter RPG. I've mentioned this idea before and I'm coming back to it again.
In my customer interviews, with big accounts and small, I’ve learned that the main goal for many active twitter users is to make connections with others. Twitter is already a great platform for that. Like I wrote in this post, the Twitter RPG is the game they are already playing.
I’ve also learned that it will be hard to create a whole new UI that users are comfortable switching to. Twitter’s UI is great for reading tweets and threads. Most additional tools need to have a specific purpose, especially because creating a full alternative UI is often hampered by api limits (not saying it’s impossible, but requires a lot of hacks and work to make it happen).
Plus, many folks do not have an intense enough interest in feed building to use another tool for sorting/filtering/crafting their feed in new ways.
Those learnings have led me back to the RPG. My learnings from customer interviews, other conversations, my own experience, and my intuition tell me that this is a great place to put our Tweetscape work. It has potential to create an excited base of users who want to use their RPG scores as a new metric to measure their twitter success and as a signal for finding the others.
The RPG will be based on a point system that gamifies “good behavior,” which will start as an attempt to quantify good reply game.
We can start with three daily metrics:
Num replies sent
Num likes received on replies (normalized by combo of follower counts and OP follower count)
Num replies received (normalized by follower count)
Likes will likely become an important part of these metrics, but the api rate limits on likes endpoints are rough, so it’s not the easiest place to start.
The project will be a chrome extension with a design inspired by current video games. Chrome extension setup makes adoption much easier, as we won’t start by asking users to get used to a brand new UI.
Also, the twitter analytics api does a solid job of this with classic metrics already, although these build more slowly and are not an integrated part of the UX:
My rough and non-video game inspired idea of the layout of this chrome extension is shown here:
One of the first and most important next steps of this work is creating sexy figma mockups of how it could actually look. A gamified and attractive design will be key to the success.
The RPG works well for seasoned users who are already playing. Now, they get to continue their behavior and use our extension as a signal to others that they are good players.
At the same time, it will provide a structure for newer users who are still figuring out how twitter works and encourage them to play in a similar fashion as the experienced players.
Plus, this can become an important signal as to how active an account is (on a particular day, or using a longer term score), which can help people identify "the others."
The collaborative environment this encourages fits perfectly into our :sparkles: Wisdom Age :sparkles: mission.
The system will also be normalized by metrics like follower count to put all accounts on an even playing field. Determining a good way to do this will be part of some EDA experiments we must run as we work through the point system. Also brings up good questions like “how might this point system incentivize players with large audiences to behave differently?”
I also think it is helpful to note that if we can build out an excited user base, the flexibility of this idea likely lends well to monetization options in the future!
:clipboard: TODO:
Here’s an idea of the work for the next few weeks:
[ ] Validate vision with team @nicholaschiang @RhysLindmark @brendon-wong Shingai
[ ] Find current video game scoreboard inspiration
[ ] Begin creating hi-def figma mockups of the UI
[ ] Start pulling data for seed accounts and toying with point system formulas - soon to be detailed in a separate ticket.
[ ] Create a ticket detailing more ideas for extensible UI, second order effects of a point system, and the possible feature of “daily quests” to get people started (or as an alternative to the point system) - #423
[ ] Run customer interviews with this idea in mind (start schedule more convos);
@ntorba @RhysLindmark @brendon-wong I think it’s best we start building this and go from there. WDYT?
:dart: Pitch:
Thanks @nicholaschiang for the nice structure and emojis you used in your RFC proposal ticket.
Twitter RPG Background
The Twitter RPG. I've mentioned this idea before and I'm coming back to it again.
In my customer interviews, with big accounts and small, I’ve learned that the main goal for many active twitter users is to make connections with others. Twitter is already a great platform for that. Like I wrote in this post, the Twitter RPG is the game they are already playing.
I’ve also learned that it will be hard to create a whole new UI that users are comfortable switching to. Twitter’s UI is great for reading tweets and threads. Most additional tools need to have a specific purpose, especially because creating a full alternative UI is often hampered by api limits (not saying it’s impossible, but requires a lot of hacks and work to make it happen). Plus, many folks do not have an intense enough interest in feed building to use another tool for sorting/filtering/crafting their feed in new ways.
Those learnings have led me back to the RPG. My learnings from customer interviews, other conversations, my own experience, and my intuition tell me that this is a great place to put our Tweetscape work. It has potential to create an excited base of users who want to use their RPG scores as a new metric to measure their twitter success and as a signal for finding the others.
In other words, the Twitter RPG is a new way to help ensure that all accounts, but especially small accounts, have FUN on twitter.
Proposal
The RPG will be based on a point system that gamifies “good behavior,” which will start as an attempt to quantify good reply game. We can start with three daily metrics:
Likes will likely become an important part of these metrics, but the api rate limits on likes endpoints are rough, so it’s not the easiest place to start.
The project will be a chrome extension with a design inspired by current video games. Chrome extension setup makes adoption much easier, as we won’t start by asking users to get used to a brand new UI.
Also, the twitter analytics api does a solid job of this with classic metrics already, although these build more slowly and are not an integrated part of the UX:
My rough and non-video game inspired idea of the layout of this chrome extension is shown here:
One of the first and most important next steps of this work is creating sexy figma mockups of how it could actually look. A gamified and attractive design will be key to the success.
The RPG works well for seasoned users who are already playing. Now, they get to continue their behavior and use our extension as a signal to others that they are good players. At the same time, it will provide a structure for newer users who are still figuring out how twitter works and encourage them to play in a similar fashion as the experienced players. Plus, this can become an important signal as to how active an account is (on a particular day, or using a longer term score), which can help people identify "the others."
The collaborative environment this encourages fits perfectly into our :sparkles: Wisdom Age :sparkles: mission.
The system will also be normalized by metrics like follower count to put all accounts on an even playing field. Determining a good way to do this will be part of some EDA experiments we must run as we work through the point system. Also brings up good questions like “how might this point system incentivize players with large audiences to behave differently?”
I also think it is helpful to note that if we can build out an excited user base, the flexibility of this idea likely lends well to monetization options in the future!
:clipboard: TODO: Here’s an idea of the work for the next few weeks:
@ntorba @RhysLindmark @brendon-wong I think it’s best we start building this and go from there. WDYT?