DEV Community

Andrew Brown 🇨🇦
Andrew Brown 🇨🇦

Posted on

Twitter <> Andrew

I was in a Twitter Space with the DevRel team, unforently. Twitter Spaces was crashing so I decided to outline feedback for the DevRel team here, and also to provide feedback to the Product team.

I am always looking for creative ways to provide an interactive experience to my followers, or to find a way of extending my Twitter community with an accompanying app.

I have a bunch of ideas but did not have time to outline them here.

DevRel Team

Twitter SDKs

DevRel team was saying that Twitter was too small of a company to support an official SDK in multiple libraries.

With the rise of cloud, being a polygot programmer is quite common. Let us have at least one official SDK.

Twitter OAuth for Common Web Frameworks

The largest friction of getting a Twitter App going is OAuth.
Everytime I create a Twitter app I have issues and it's hard to know why.

Just having sample apps that are known to work with up to date instructions could be used to help me debug my own apps or at least just build using different technology.

  • Ruby on Rails
  • Laravel
  • Django
  • NextJs

The language used for Twitter Projects is not the same defined for OAuth and so there is some technical uncertainty when implementing.

Twitter API - Twitter Space Analytics

Be able to extract analytics data from previous spaces

Twitter API - Find list of previous spaces

Be able to extract all my previous spaces

  • duration
  • start time
  • date
  • title
  • speakers

Twitter API - Create a Space

I want to be able to create a space via an API endpoint

Twitter API - Download a Space Recording

I want to be able to download or trigger a space to be delivered for download to my email.

Twitter API - Twitter Blue Long Videos

Does the API support long-form videos?
I will have to test to find out.

https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api/v1/media/upload-media/api-reference/post-media-upload

Product Team

Crashing Twitter Spaces on Android

Twitter Spaces on the Android app crashes alot.

On the Twitter Space with the DevRel team, the app crashes six times.

If you're a speaker reconnecting it does not put you back to your previous status.

It's to the point where I'm considering getting an iOS device.

Speakers and Reactions in a Twitter Space not possible on the Web Desktop

In order to be a speaker or reactions, you have to use the mobile app.

I'd say 90% of my guest speakers make the mistake of joining from the Desktop Web.

I have a pre-show checklist, remind my speakers, but they still join initially from the desktop.

I would personally like to join from my Web Desktop, so I utilize my expensive RE20 microphone.

I can plug my USB preamp into my phone but I cannot monitor, and while running an experiment with an external USB microphone with a guest speaker the audio was worse.

Reactions would be great and seem like a low-hanging fruit for Web Desktop. At the start of the Twitter show I like to engage reoccurring guests by waving to them.

If they are joining on Web Desktop they can't receive a reaction.

Starting Point for Twitter Space Query String does not work.

I noticed that when sharing a Twitter Space in the query string you can set the start time. This is useful if you

Analytics for current and previous shows

In order to get an idea of analytics, I have to constantly collapse my space to see real-time attendance.

I noticed only when I record my space do I get end show analytics eg:

  • unique listeners during the entire space
  • highest amount of people joined at a given time

If you don't manually capture that data, you can't ever see it again. This is a bigger problem when a space crashes and reconnect does not happen ending the space.

Analytics are important for my guest speakers since they can report back the analytics to their organization.

It would also help me know if my spaces are growing, what are the trends so I can better optimize time and day.

Creation and Sharing Spaces

Its a real pain to create a space from the phone. I really wish I could just create them from the Desktop.

To promote my spaces I will create a banner graphic and then in the reply show the Twitter Space.

https://twitter.com/andrewbrown/status/1486350343084687362

I always create this from the desktop because if I wanted to post from my phone I have to download the graphic to my phone, and then when I try and post the banner graphic Twitter 90% hands forever trying to upload the banner. Reducing the banner size does not help.

In order to add the Twitter Space reminder as reply, the share functionality is really buggy.

I can't email it to myself, so next Ill try to DM it to someone. The search for DMs doesn't work properly so most of the time I end up just DM someone randomly so I can then log into the Web Desktop and copy it. Sometimes that doesn't work so I have to write out the Twitter Space manually.

Can only schedule one space in advance

In order to have a decent showing I need to market the space in advance and need people to set reminders.

However, you can only schedule 1 space at a time only 2 weeks in advance.

So my marketing is pinning the event.

I really wish I could schedule multiple spaces, so people could set reminders.

I wish I could just schedule all my spaces, then do an "upcoming show thread", and then in each of the replies have the reminders.

https://twitter.com/andrewbrown/status/1481723079642521604

Due to the current restrictions, I can only have a space every 2-3 days. If I could schedule multiple spaces I could have a good showing daily and sometimes I want to do daily spaces.

I tried to do AWS re:Invent virtually, and I had to create my own public calendar.

https://reinvent2021.100daysofcloud.com/

Filters previous Twitter Spaces

I wish I could quickly filter my previous twitter spaces based on recordings.
I have Twitter Blue and I suppose I could use Bookmarks.
Currently, I organize them using Blackmagic.so

Downloading Twitter Space Recordings

No idea how to download them. People say request a backup of your data. I've tried this 5 times. Never got the email. So I have no idea of the raw recordings would be here.

I really want to clip out soundbites to create an audiogram to reneged past events or drive people from LinkedIn over to Twitter.

Social Card for Twitter Spaces

When I share a direct like to a Twitter Space recording / set reminder, it just shows my Name and Avatar. So I have to then create my own graphic and then put the link, but on LinkedIn people are clicking on the graphic which goes no where.

Twitter Space Banner

I really wish I could upload a banner graphic that is set as the background of the Recording / Set Reminder.

This way I would not have to have to reply and bury the recording.

If the embedded Recording / Set Reminder / Listener box allowed me to tag who the guest speakers then I would probably skip a graphic altogether.

Speaker Creep

Sometimes people who are looking to grow their audience want to come up as a speaker just so they can get follows or be marked as a speaker.

I wish I could designate who the speakers are for the space to mitigate these clout chasers.

Twitter Blue - Long Videos

I was not sure of Twitter Blue Longer Videos were only for other Twitter Blue folks, or only on Web. So I delayed getting Twitter Blue for months until someone who already used it confirmed the behaviour.

Twitter Blue - Undo

I find this feature incredibly useful because I'm dyslexic and I find until I publish then I notice my mistake deleted and this happens like 5 times. Undo feature is great!

I wish the Undo and Send Now buttons where swapped so Send now is on the right.

I sometimes find myself going back to Undo because I keep thinking the right button will publish based on how another platform would place and highlight their publish button.

Super Followers - Canada

I create alot of educational content for tech and cloud. On average 100 videos per week.

It would be easy for me to produce exclusive paid content on the platform, like create an entire course but Super Followers is not available in Canada, so I cannot deliver this experience.

Revue Newsletter

I wanted to do a rollup of my best tweets and expand on them in a Revue Newsletter but I realized that Revue Newsletter takes up too much real estate at top of the fold, hurting my numbers for pinning things like Twitter Spaces.

I have found rotating pinned content essential for my community growth.

I have not seen much success with other Revue Newsletters on much larger Twitter accounts.

TwitterSpace Recording Icon

Every time I run a Twitter Space: "Is it recorded?"
An indicator would be great.
I guess I could just put a graphic in my banner that would mitigate this issue.

Blocked People in Twitter Space

I ended up on a Twitter Space with two people I blocked.
My block rate is in the single digits.

People You Might Like

Twitter recommends me, people, I do not like and I can never dismiss so I have to see the same recommendation on Desktop every time I join.

Twitter Space - Categories

Twitter updated it so you choose a category title and a sub title. The entirety of the Technology category was Crypto, and other junk topics. I eventually found after a few spaces "Tech events" in the middle of the tag cloud.

Twitter Communities

You can create communities eg. AWS, Google Cloud, Cloud Native where tweets are scoped to a community.

How to create a community was unknown to me, and so these communities ended up getting scooped and are essentially being run by people who are just sitting on the community name, blocking any further community development.

I could put effort into these communities but it's frustrating that someone else will always be moderators/organizers of the space, so I'm helping someone else grow for someone else.

Top comments (0)