Twitter Communities... and some personal news! šŸ’œ

Hi everyone! So after an amazing few weeks sorting out all the stuff around the acquisition of Sphere, there was one thing I couldnā€™t really talk about at the time and that was what it meant for me personally. Thatā€™s because, due to there never having been Community initiatives at Twitter in the UK before, the process ended up taking longer and so it was still getting worked out after we announced.

Today, I am absolutely thrilled to announce to you all, one of the communities Iā€™ve loved most, that I am now officially the very first Community Manager for Twitter Communities!!! Iā€™ve been on Twitter since 2007, so itā€™s really a dream role for me :blush: And I canā€™t wait to get started!

If you arenā€™t sure whatā€™s going on with Twitter Communities, you can learn all about here:

Thereā€™s already a sizeable early cohort of Communities on the platform, and as we build out the product that will scale up pretty sizeablyā€¦ And Iā€™ll be sure to let those of you on Twitter know when thereā€™s something you might be interested in joining, whether thatā€™s a fintech, startup, crowdfunding community, or maybe even a Monzo specific one :stuck_out_tongue: Excited to start building the future of digital communities at Twitter and supporting all the creators :purple_heart:

First things first, @AlanDoe I think a change to my user info is required :grin:

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Congrats, Simon! Keen to hear more about Twitter Communities - let us know when itā€™s rolled out to Android and open to more folk!

This sounds like a lot of fun. How about it @cookywook?!

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Congrats Simon! Iā€™m thrilled for you!

Coincidentally, I actually opened a Twitter account this morning! First time Iā€™ve had an account on there in close to a decade!

I used Sign In with Apple, which was nice, and was ultimately the reason why I went ahead with signing up. Donā€™t plan to use it much, I was just getting tired of all the pop ups from browsing without an account, but now I actually do have an account to check communities out and see what theyā€™re about once they launch.

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Thanks Tom! Thereā€™s really such a huge opportunity here, in the sense that we foresee there being users who may exclusively use Communities for interacting, because A) they know the groups they are in align with their interest, B) thereā€™s an instant audience that cares about the same thing so you donā€™t have to work hard to build an audience of like-minded people and C) Communities can set and enforce their own rules, which will be huge for safety.

Over time, that may encourage them to sometimes tweet publicly too, but even if they donā€™t thereā€™s still a place where theyā€™ll feel safe and encouraged to discuss whatever they are passionate about :blush:

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Congrats Simon, and great that Twitter was wise enough to appoint someone who really gets online communities and understands whatā€™s needed for healthy diverse ones. Iā€™m excited to see what you grow this into. What an opportunity, and very much deserved!!

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Congratulations @simonb well done and I will go and check it out for twitter communities.

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Wow congrats @simonb how cool is that! Right in at the beginning of something huge to get an amazing foundation built - then the sky is the limit when you have the backing of Twitter!

Donā€™t forget to change your title on here to show off your fancy new role :wink:

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Thatā€™s a great idea!

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Day 3! IT Onboarding is complete, Iā€™m on Slack, all HR stuff filled in, and getting up to speed with 2022 strategy in general and what weā€™re planning for Communities :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Product velocity is on :fire: at the moment here, and for everything thatā€™s shipped in the last year, Iā€™ve probably already seen just as much stuff thatā€™s in the pipeline just from poking around on Slack and on the staff build of the app (which already has some cool feature flags and staff previews).

Make sure you follow me on Twitter and also follow the Communities account if youā€™re up for hearing more about what Iā€™ll be working on on a day-to-day. As we open up the feature over the coming months, Iā€™d love to get you guys involved and hear your feedback :slight_smile:

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Do you have an edit button? :smiley:

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Not as such, but Twitter Blue (premium product) has an option to set a time frame between you sending the tweet and it getting posted, during which you can cancel the posting if you spot a mistake and need to edit.

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A few updates of note, for anyone interested!

  • We hit our Q4 goal of 1000 Communities! :raised_hands:
  • Q1 goal is 10,000, so weā€™ve got some work to do. A big milestone for this will beā€¦
  • Android! Expect to see full Android support in the next couple of weeks :android:
  • Even though we first did a soft-launch in September, our largest Community to date is only 2 weeks old, and is a community about the anime show My Hero Academia
  • Some of our most popular Communities which are open to the public (ie, not invite-only) are the Xbox Community, Tech Twitter, and Notion Creators.
  • Weā€™ll build full discoverability later this year, but one hack for now is using Twitter search to return tweets with Community URLs.
  • As of today, we have a Community for the hottest online puzzle game right nowā€¦ Yep, itā€™s Wordle!
  • Our Q1 roadmap is finalised and hopefully we can share more about it soon - one thing that is a key focus for us is content differentiation - ie, posting/replying/engagement formats beyond what you see on your regular timeline.
  • Iā€™m totally open to the idea of someone/multiple folks from here starting a UK Fintech communityā€¦ you know where my DMs are :upside_down_face:

Hoping everyone is doing OK - happy to answer any general questions if anyone has any!

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Thatā€™s super exciting! There is already an old school Roller Derby community on Twitter (just using hashtags to find each other) so I canā€™t wait for it to become a real thing.

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Big milestone! We launched Android support yesterday :sunglasses:

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Been a while since I posted an update, so for anyone interested:

We launched a bunch of new features in Q1! Most of this was foundational core work (or in other words, a lot of low hanging fruit). This is great, because it means the foundation of the product is much stronger, meaning weā€™ve been able to expand access to far more Communities. It also means it frees up a big chunk of Q2 to work on ā€œBig Betsā€, or large scale changes to how the feature looks, feels and works.

Some of what weā€™ve launched recently:

  • Community Search (You can now search for Communities on both mobile and web. All existing Communities will appear in Search, except for NSFW ones for now. Weā€™ll work on a safe filter for folks who wish to search for NSFW Communities).

  • Request To Join (Communities can now set their membership access to Request To Join, which means members can send a request to join the community, and admins/mods have access to the approval queue)

  • Add/Remove Moderators directly from Community Settings

  • Suggested Communities (aka, early Discovery) - Users will now see a list of suggested Communities which is partially curated by us, and partially automated with machine learning based on your interests.

Finally, Iā€™m pleased to announce we just launched the first version of our Admin and Mod info hub! Can you tell who wrote the copy? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye::stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye::stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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In lieu of a bigger update to come soon, just wanted to say itā€™s very cool that some of our large partners are setting up Twitter Communities.

The Chicago Bulls just set one up officially :sunglasses::basketball:

https://twitter.com/i/communities/1513919282492620804

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I wanted to set one up but realised I have to have been registered on Twitter for 6 months :frowning: I used to be on there years ago and have only just set up a new account. One dayā€¦

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ā€¦ And about 5 months and 30 days.

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Yeah, unfortunately we do have to have an eligibility criteria so early in the game. But definitely feel free to hit me up when you hit the 6 month mark :purple_heart:

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@simonb I just want to leave and close the community I openedā€¦ I couldnā€™t search before and now I see much more active Retro Communities.

I canā€™t close it despite being the only one left. Iā€™m @thom_horne on Twitter too; I see the same error in app and on web.

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