Evan Williams Takes Questions On Twitter And Reveals Some Of What Could Be Next

Maybe it is a good thing that Twitter co-founder Evan Williams is no longer CEO — he now seems to have time to do things like answer a boatload of questions from users on Twitter. For about an hour today, Williams did just that and provided some interesting insights into New Twitter and what types of possibilities are out there for the service in the future, feature-wise.

I went ahead and curated a list of his best tweet replies, but I’ll spell the answers out in a simplified manner below. According to Williams:

  • Twitter is working on a way to show entire back-and-forth conversations in the right-pane on New Twitter. Currently, they only show one tweet that a tweet is replying to.
  • Many of the New Twitter ideas will find their way into the various mobile interfaces.
  • Williams agrees that the new URL structure for Twitter isn’t pretty, but it’s needed to keep things fast.
  • There are no plans for a way to make individual tweets private on a case-by-case basis.
  • Twitter is thinking about an option to put DMs and @replies in the main timeline.
  • There will eventually be a DM alert of some sort on the site to show you when you have a new message.
  • Twitter.com will eventually use the User Streams API (real time updates).
  • The Settings page will soon get an update to look like the rest of New Twitter.
  • There are no plans to ever put any time of media in the tweet stream itself.
  • Twitter may experiment with live-updating feeds instead of having the new tweet alert.
  • There won’t be a Twitter movie — unless it’s an animated musical.
  • Also followed by” and “You both follow” are coming back — Twitter is figuring out how to re-implement them.
  • Twitter is trying to think of a way to make it easier to see who has retweeted you.
  • Williams likes that the right pane is the same size as the stream — he actually wants it wider.
  • Twitter plans to keep on changing things up regularly — this redesign is not the end.
  • Williams would like to see more stats for users on the front-end.
  • Twitter is thinking about allowing users to change the color of the black top bar in New Twitter.
  • New Twitter decodes all shortened links.
  • Retweeting with comments is not coming.
  • A new Tweetie for Mac is not coming anytime soon.
  • The Fail Whale exists on New Twitter, but they’re working hard to keep him out of the waters.
  • Twitter not currently working on a profile picture cropper.
  • Animated avatars will not be allowed. Twitter finds them “distracting”.
  • New Twitter will have Posterous support in the right pane soon.
  • Tumblr and img.ly might be getting support soon as well. Twitter is working to add “many more” media providers.
  • The ability to shorten a link on twitter.com is being worked on right now.
  • Twitter is thinking about a “mute” button to block users temporarily (like Brizzly has).