Some people use Twitter to share links to recent blog posts and news items, both their own and those posted by others. Some use it to talk about the weather and Elliot Spitzer. Still others use it to view news feeds, playlists, and other syndicated, periodic content. I fall into all three groups.

Twitter is fascinating in that it is apparently simple, yet can be molded to almost any business or personal use. As I think about how it can be used commercially, and how it would be more useful to me, there’s a feature I’d like to see that I call “tabbed channels.”

Right now, Twitter has two separate streams, the people you are following (Home) and everyone in the world who is twittering, (Public Timeline.) This doesn’t give me the flexibility I want. What would be awesome is the ability to create certain channels (via categories I assign) and then tag my Twitter names, so that I can have separate, topical conversational streams.

Here are the channels/tabs I would create right away:

• Colleagues PR and social media people
• Friends Co-workers, family, friends (this is where the “pizza guy is at the door” tweets go)
• Playlists I’d put my SomaFM and other streaming playlists here
• Newsfeed @Slashdot, CNET, Valleywag (many news feeds update so often, or in batch mode, fragmenting other conversation streams to the point of unreadability)
• 2000+ Club “A-List” bloggers with too many followers to actually engage anyone in a conversation, but who often have something interesting to say

The reason for separating out playlists for example is because including it in my regular stream is too distracting.

I can see all kinds of other channels. Why not a sports channel and people could tag their tweets accordingly?

I know Twitter’s simplicity is what makes it so appealing to some people, but ultimately, a lack of features and functionality will limit its commercial viability and will have people scratching their heads and saying “what’s the business model?”

* Note: this is essentially a reprint of a post I did last December on my old blog. Since that blog is no longer active, I decided to update the post and republish it here. Don’t hate me for doing that.

news feed, playlists, streaming, tabbed channels, twitter