This whole post was inspired by this tweet:

Twitter is really missing a number next to the reply arrow to depict how many replies there are to a tweet without having to expand it.

— Jenni (@madebyjenni) November 18, 2015

There are many things that Facebook and Twitter have ended up introducing that I wished for ages before – like pinned posts/tweets – and of course millions of things that never crossed my mind. Here’s a current improvements wishlist; fingers crossed some of these will happen in the near future!

Facebook

Be able to pin posts (for yourself) in groups you’re a member of
You can only pin a post if you’re an admin, but being able to pin up to three posts as a group member, just visible for you, would be really handy. Some posts you can hit Save on and they go to your bookmarks, but they are only ones that contain external links.

This idea could be extended by being able to pin posts to the top of your home feed. It’d be used for important reminders or for saving a particularly fond memory or compliment.

Show an error message to people trying to tag non-group members in closed/private/secret groups
At the moment it still posts the person’s comment but the recipient’s name is greyed out and they won’t be notified they were tagged or be able to see the thread. I can see why they do it, but there are SO many users who don’t understand what that means and it’s bad UX. Trying to tag someone in a group who doesn’t have permission to view it should prompt an error message and the option to send them an invite to the group or to message the group admin and ask if they can join.

Proper integrated ecommerce
I know they’re working on this, so I’ll mostly just leave this here. Aside from saying that it needs super-amazing integration with offers and ads, and mailing list functionality, which is pretty obvious.

Twitter

Less in the way of automatic opt-in push notifications
I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to clear notifications because apparently two people I follow both shared something. Wow. I only want to be notified of people directly communicating with me. I have to go through and turn off push notifications for all the new non-notification rubbish they create on a regular basis. It’s super annoying when you have multiple accounts.

Which brings me on to…

Easy multiple account handling
This would be especially great via mobile. Having a box for each option where you can edit settings for multiple accounts simultaneously would be great.

Show the number of replies next to the reply arrow
Twitter does this for likes and RTs, so why not replies? It makes people more likely to join the conversation.

The ability to turn off animated avatars
These are the bane of my life, seriously. They’re especially annoying in software like Tweetdeck where they flash incessantly. You can’t tell customers to get a new avatar, as much as I would like to. There should be an option for your account to turn animated avatars off.

Making unused accounts free to register again
I know they have plans to do this and I understand it’s complicated, but it’s been years now.

Both

The ability to sort notifications
At the moment with Facebook friend requests, messages, and other notifications all have their own icon and notification system. I’d like to see the ‘other’ one broken down; for example a drop down that would show me the number of notifications from Pages, Groups, and Friends. They aren’t equal priorities to me but they’re treated as such.

Twitter’s notifications would benefit from being broken down into RTs, likes and replies instead of just ‘Messages’ and ‘Notifications’.

So, that’s my list! What would you change/add to Facebook and Twitter?