The valuations of messaging apps like WhatsApp, Snapchat and others are, obviously, stunning.
Twitter is our de facto identifier now (think of all the times you see Twitter handles on TV news and other media). Not Facebook, and certainly not Google.
Allowing proper private communication among users is an obvious easy win. And yet Twitter has never really cared about private messaging. Direct messaging is a long neglected product, and Twitter doesn’t seem to care much about it.
I wonder if Twitter execs regret not paying more attention to private messaging, and if they occasionally fantasize about the extra tens of billions of dollars they might have added to their market cap if they had done so.
It’s not too late.
Uncrunched 
Twitter’s lack of aggressiveness in truly taking advantage of its DM side is virtually unforgivable. (That AND letting the abject nonsense app called #TrueTwit delude thousands of innocent Twitter users who want a bit of protection but, end up being labeled by that product’s name…)
It’s too late. Anyone evaluating Twitter’s standing should be buffering for the impending loss of all 1-1 messaging activity on the service. That being said, their 1-n broadcast platform is still a valuable asset and meaningful service.
Reblogged this on .
They made it even more useless by removing the ability to send links in direct messages. Worst spam protection of the year.
Reblogged this on xolanicele's Blog.
Yes, please. What was it, a few months ago?, when they changed the e-mail notifications to no longer include the message sent, it became even less useful than it was before.
I see your points and I’m not a big twitter user, but wasn’t the whole point of the company:
Public Messaging?
I’m amazed at how hard it can be to send Twitter direct messages. It works well enough from the web app or from TweetDeck – well up to a point more about that in a minute – but on at least one of the mobile device apps there’s no simple way to DM a follower from their profile or from a message they have posted. At the very least Twitter needs to fix this.
As for the web app and TweetDeck, I’ve noticed Twitter isn’t very smart when you type @ followed by the first letters of a follower’s handle, the system appears to pick the highest profile accounts with those letters, not the ones you follow or communicate with most frequently.
Simply fixing these two shortcomings would give Twitter a small DM boost.
Reblogged this on The 77th. and commented:
Is Twitter lazy or just blind: Making a play for messaging supremacy?