> Someone posts a link, I find something on a website, etc. that go to Twitter? BAM! SIGN-UP NOW OR LEAVE!
If they force you to sign up, they get more user data for the pool. I don't think that the slice of their market they're losing out on by this is very big.
> Lowering the barrier to entry for that is critical.
The barrier to entry for content creation on twitter is absurdly low. It's not the login process. It's the content itself, which is only a couple of sentences. It's not editing a video, or writing a short article, or creating an image, or managing a forum. It's just 'spurt out what I'm thinking right now in one sentence'. Login processes are not the barrier to content creation, effort required is.
Anecdotally, I've never bothered to sign up for Twitter, and the experience for logged-out users has contributed to that. Instead of thinking "wow all my friends and important people are on there so I guess I'll sign up," I think "well this isn't very engaging, but I still technically got the content I came for, so I'm not really incentivized to go further."
And I disagree in general - login processes are often a huge barrier. People don't want to create accounts everywhere; it used to be cool and novel, now it's a burden.
I do agree that login processes can be a huge barrier. Slack got to be a gorilla by making onboarding buttery smooth, whilst its competitors had a fairly vanilla approach, clunky by comparison.
But, in terms of content creation that the GP mentioned (rather than content consumption), login processes are not the problematic part.
I think one of the mistakes may be that they focus on a wrong metric. I alway read signups/users as a cited metric. It would be way wiser to focus on improving more active metrics (engagement stuff).
The start page is a good example...sure right now it seems to optimize for account creation but I'd say it would be more of a win if users actually engaged with the twitter stream. If it's useful they'll sign up.
[alas I hope all of this was discussed and tested to death already]
I assume that metrics are why every site I go to has a glossy landing page with a huge "Sign Up" button, and then the "sign in" link is hidden in the corner. I'm sure that passes all the A/B tests but it gives me the impression that returning Web users just aren't that important.
A site I signed up for recently at least lets you log in by typing your existing username and password into the huge sign-up form. That was a breath of fresh air.
If they force you to sign up, they get more user data for the pool. I don't think that the slice of their market they're losing out on by this is very big.
> Lowering the barrier to entry for that is critical.
The barrier to entry for content creation on twitter is absurdly low. It's not the login process. It's the content itself, which is only a couple of sentences. It's not editing a video, or writing a short article, or creating an image, or managing a forum. It's just 'spurt out what I'm thinking right now in one sentence'. Login processes are not the barrier to content creation, effort required is.