photomatt:

Twitter is Copying Us, not vice versa

I keep getting asks saying “stop copying Twitter.” We’re not! If anything it’s going the other way with them copying us.

1. Long posts, which were on Tumblr first.
2. Mixing text and rich media, which Tumblr did first.
3. If we go way back, supporting images and embedding media in the first place, which Twitter didn’t used to do. (Remember twimg and Photobucket?)
4. A premium upgrade, which we did on Tumblr first.
5. They copied our tabs.
6. Polls, which were on WP.com/Jetpack first.
7. Subscriptions to individual creators, which we did first with Post+.
8. Tags existed on Tumblr first.
9. We have Asks! And custom domains! And custom themes!
10. We supported editing first, you couldn’t do that on Twitter until relatively recently.

Now obviously they have 20x the monthly users we do, so have executed better in a number of ways:

1. Their native ads provide much more targeting.
2. Per-post metrics.
3. Lists and communities.
4. Direct Messaging. (Though theirs is still not great.)
5. Much more robust and real-time search.
6. They did livestreaming first.
7. Their apps and web QA seem more stable. I’ve never experienced an app crash there.
8. It’s easier to navigate RTs and comment/reply to them than reblogs.

What did I miss?