As Twitter goes mainstream I hear more questions about what makes Twitter so special? Many are from people outside the tech industry – they simply don’t get Twitter. Is it all the celebrities who got on? Is it the tech geeks? Like any successful product it’s a combination of things, but one ingredient that is often overlooked is it’s character development. Such strong character that the infamous fail whale is the equivalent of famous movie lines people quote.
Twitter’s character is more than the great art. Twitter uses every opportunity to express itself and with a touch of humor. How can you not like the “Who goes there?” screen?
Twitter did a lot of things right but beyond the more obvious they utilize classic character development techniques from screenwriting. I doubt they were thinking about screenwriting at the time but their minimalist design has unforeseen benefits.
Character is revealed through choices made under pressure
As the screenwriting guru Robert McKee explains, true character is expressed in the choices they make under pressure.
TRUE CHARACTER is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure – the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature.
When Twitter is under pressure, say when the service is down, it chooses to add a little humor and a art. Where other services use the opportunity to be informative Twitter uses the majority of the error screen to express character, to have some fun.
Action moves story
Dialog doesn’t move screenplays, action does. Most of the time the action taking place on Twitter is from other users, however when there is action they use the opportunity to reveal character The service being down would certainly count as action, so would finding a user who has been removed.
Where other services rely on their ads or about pages to build character, Twitter speaks most often through their actions. Compare Twitter to Ask.com’s old mascot Jeeves. He was around for years and we never really knew him. They built ads around Jeeves and plastered him all over the site yet none of it from action.
Characters are simple
Twitter also follows another cardinal rule of screenwriting, keep it simple. We all have our favorite movie characters and think of them as being rich and complex, but in reality movies need to deliver simple characters so we can know them.
A character is a work of art, a metaphor for human nature. We relate to characters as if they were real, but they’re superior to reality. Their aspects are designed to be clear and knowable; whereas our fellow humans are difficult to understand, if not enigmatic. We know characters better than we know our friends because a character is eternal and unchanging, while people shift – just when we thing we understand them, we don’t. In fact, I know Rick Blaine in CASABLANCA better then I know myself. Rick is always Rick. I’m a bit iffy.
Twitter doesn’t do much PR or ads to confuse us. Like the service itself, Twitter’s character is simple and I can easily plug it into my head just as I do great movie characters.
Other examples of great character
Can you think of other services that exemplify character development? Or maybe some things Twitter is doing that is detrimental to the character development?
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A Senior Product Manager at 