Shared content gives the internet life.
Bringing People Back with Shared Tweets
I identified improving the Tweet-sharing experience as a potential opportunity. Collaboration with the data scientist on my team validated this. I then redesigned the Tweet-sharing experience to reduced friction, increasing the number of Tweets shared and the number of users returning to Twitter. While redesigning the share sheet, I also mapped out how this feature could develop beyond just a redesign of one feature, but how to design a whole system of features across the returning user journey.
Tweet screenshots are everywhere
People frequently share Tweet screenshots on Instagram.
People make videos reacting to Tweets or using them as a prompt.
Tiktok
People share Tweet screenshots with friends and groupchats.
Messaging Apps
Problems
Sharing Friction
Sharing from Twitter was mostly focused on sharing interally. But this meant that if you wanted to share externally you had to click once more to open the system share sheet. This added extra friction to sharing.
Tweet Rendering
There were also problems with other platforms not reliably rendering links to Tweets. For example, even if an image was provided via opengraph tags, sometimes the author’s avator image would display instead of the Tweet image.
Data-Informed Design
During 2020 planning, I advocated for redesigning the sharing experience. The data scientist on our team was interested in this opportunity, so he did some research.
His research showed that retention rates for users who return to Twitter via shared Tweet URL’s is higher than that of push notifications, email, and Google search.
Up to this point, the team had never invested in the sharing experience, so this presented a valuable, under-invested opportunity.
Solutions
I approached this problem space by redesigning multiple points in the user experience
Share Sheet that reduces the friction of sharing
Improved legibility of Tweets off-platform
Explorations of sharing Tweets to Photo and video-based platforms
Tweet Share Sheet
The share sheet simplifies sharing by bringing in the most popular apps directly into Twitter. Users expressed delight at us cutting out an additional step.
Impact
The share sheet was launched in September 2020 and exceeded our expectations, increasing shares by 350K per day.
This was such a huge win for our team that this work was mentioned in Twitter’s letter to the board of directors. And a year later, we had an entire team focused on the sharing experience.
Improved Legibility of Tweets on Whatsapp
The majority of referral traffic from shared Tweets came from WhatsApp, so I proposed some recommendations to make it easier for users to read and appreciate Tweets.
Larger Media Previews
Larger text
Increased text contrast
The team was convinced, and they adopted some of the recommendations.
Old Version
New Version
Sharing to Instagram
People were already sharing Tweet screenshots to Instagram. I thought that if we made it easier to share Tweets, we could increase awareness of Twitter and our creators. Toalign stakeholders, I mocked up explorations showing this experience.
Exploration
The product today
Concept Exploration
Impact
These exploratory designs for sharing Tweets to Instagram helped get PM’s, engineers, and business partners excited about what we could do with sharing as we continued to explore this workstream.
Key Collaborators
Laura Burkhauser
Laura and I collaborated on the design iterations and evaluated what to include in the MVP. Laura coordinated with other stakeholders across the company and outside of Twitter so that we could change how Tweets show up on other platforms.
Product ManagerAngela Lam
Angela and Laura wrote a proposal that got the Share sheet work approved. Angela also conducted early explorations of the Share Sheet while I was supporting another team.
Product Designer ManagerData ScientistEugene Quan
Eugene ran the analysis that validated the potential impact of improving the Tweet-sharing experience.