James Chevalier | How Twezr Could Be Our Central Messaging Solution

19 Nov 2010

How Twezr Could Be Our Central Messaging Solution

Twezr is a new iPhone application that brings all of your contacts into one central place. You can open up Twezr and immediately see if you have email, Twitter mentions/DMs, Facebook messages/wall posts, SMSs or missed calls from any of your contacts across all of those services. Click through that first Twezr link to read a couple reviews, see an interview with the CEO, and meet them on Twitter... Then continue reading to hear my take on how Twezr can be fully realized as our Central Messaging Solution by becoming simpler.

The problem that I have with Twezr is that it tries to bring in the general timeline from services, as well. So your Twitter mentions & DMs are competing with the tweets from everyone you follow ... Your Facebook messages are competing with all of your friends' wall posts. I had a quick conversation with Twezr on Twitter (that's a mouthful) about these issues which you used to be able to read through 'curated.by', but that site has since "sunsetted" or whatever they're using in place of "failed" these days.

Instead of their current way about things, Twezr should leave the general timeline (not to mention Twitter Lists!) alone and instead only handle messages that are to you. Here's how I would make that happen:

Change "Contacts" so it lists my contacts without taking activity into consideration. So, the "Clear", "To See" and "Top" buttons can be removed - maybe the "Clear" button can be swapped out to indicate that it will sort by activity. Selecting a contact should bring me to a an all-inclusive profile screen that combines information from each service. This profile can include the five most recent posts to each service the person has joined. Twezr should allow merging of contacts so there can be one entry for a person that is known across multiple services. The 4-button bar (favorite / call / sms / message) on the profile screen should be left as-is, it's great.
Change "Messages" to be a prioritized list of messages to me regardless of which service the messages exist on. This screen might look more like what the current "Contacts" screen looks like, but the red icons indicating activity should be changed to tiny icons representing which service the message came through.
Remove the "Services" screen altogether. If there needs to be a way to view all activity, then add a button in the top bar of the "Messages" screen named "All" or "All Activity".
Leave the "Compose" screen as-is.
This might already happen, but make sure that replies seamlessly send back in the same format/service I received them in. If I received an @reply on Twitter, then my reply back should be an @reply (subtracting available characters from the 140 we're allowed to allow the @username text) ... If I receive an SMS and a Facebook message from one person, and I reply to both messages, then my replies should be sent back as SMS and Facebook message respectively.

Basically, the core focus of the app should shift away from the general-purpose status update direction that it seems to be going in and instead hone in on cross-platform (personal) messaging. Twezr has serious potential to be the one inbox for your entire online presence (or, considering this same situation from the other point of view - the one tool to manage your contact list & outbox), but any attention given to general purpose use is just going to limit that impact.

How Twezr Could Be Our Central Messaging Solution

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