(2010-06-30) Wroblewski Twitter Gradual Engagement Signups

Luke Wroblewski on the increase in conversion (registrations) for Twitter driven by "gradual engagement" (making it easier to get started). (I call that Incremental Profiling...)

Before:

• create account (name, email, password)

• use email login to find friends to follow

• see list of popular-on-Twitter non-friends to follow - Through their user research, Twitter found that while celebrities (and their tweets) were a big reason people came to Twitter, they did not keep them there. Instead, what kept users on Twitter was the things they were passionate about - hobbies, conversations with subject-matter experts, and friends.

After:

• create account (same data)

• browse content categories, find sources to follow

• use email login to find friends to follow

• search by name for other sources to follow

If we assume that following popular celebrities isn't a great reason to follow, then could the big real change be getting a taste of the variety of content out there (via browse-by-category) before "taking a chance" on entering your email credentials to scrape your address book? I dunno, it's not clear to me why this would change response rate. Could it be that most people who scrape their Address Book get very few matches, so it's not a satisfying experience? Has anyone seen any data on hit-rates? Or is it simply that, while I think of Twitter as a way of following people I know (even if only virtually), newbies think of it more as a casual-news-PorTal?

Personally, I'd be really curious to see what would happen if account creation were postponed until after people started following the topics and friends they cared about.