The social network is on a mission to win back Twitter quitters

Twitter’s biggest problem is @hannahjeanbarz. #hasntloggedinforayear #uhohtwitter

Twitter isn’t as baffling as Snapchat, but it can appear to be like learning a Morse code.

Twitter’s biggest problem is @hannahjeanbarz. #hasntloggedinforayear #uhohtwitter

Here’s the longer-than-140- character version: Hannah Barz, a 22-year-old New York University student, signed up for Twitter in 2013 and really wanted to get into it. But she gave up. Who was she supposed to follow? How could she keep up with the fast-paced timeline? When she ­tweeted, was anybody listening?

My own love for Twitter borders on unhealthy. It’s the first thing I look at in the morning and the last before I go to bed. You ­really can’t get the news faster or in greater breadth on any other ­social media platform. But nearly half of my 84,000 followers, ­including @hannahjeanbarz, change their Brita filters more often than they tweet.

I’d blame my own boring tweets but they’re certainly not the cause of Twitter’s most recent business woes. Not only is the company failing to attract new users but it reported a decline in monthly active users last quarter. As a result, Twitter has been desperately releasing features to ­address everyone’s issues. To find out if these features knock down the biggest roadblocks, I interrogated dozens of my followers who have abandoned the network. It turns out Twitter does deserve a second chance. Still, it has a long way to go to fixing its biggest problem: explaining why you’d add it to your already packed social media repertoire of Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Problem 1: What is Twitter for?

I heard it a lot: Facebook and ­Instagram are for connecting with friends, LinkedIn with colleagues. So what exactly am I supposed to do with this thing?

It’s time to stop thinking of Twitter as a social network. It’s more of a news network. I spend 75 per cent of my time in the app getting news on everything from politics to technology to, yes, the Kardashians. Twitter is also one of the few places where you can get ­direct access to the newsmakers.

It’s OK to use Twitter only as a real-time news wire, and only launch the app when you want to keep up with live events. You’ll likely find it to be faster, franker and funnier than Facebook. Want to know the easiest way to use Twitter? Log into your ­account, skip over the Home tab and tap on the lightning bolt that is Twitter’s Moments tab. Here Twitter sur­faces the most current and popular news stories shared on the service, and the best tweets about them.

Problem 2: Who do I follow and how do I keep up?

One of the best parts about Twitter is customising your experience by following the ­accounts and people you’re most interested in. When you sign up for the service, Twitter allows you to select people, companies and media outlets to follow based on your interests. Though Twitter doesn’t offer users a similar tool after the sign-up process, anyone can find things to follow by tapping the little man icon in the top left corner of the mobile app.

Now, beware: Twitter’s timeline is like Facebook’s newsfeed on caffeine pills. People told me they stopped coming back to Twitter because of the frenetic pace of their feeds. You just have to let go of the idea that you’ll be able to read everything.

Once you’ve accumulated a reasonably sane number of news and entertainment sources, say 50, turn on the new Best Tweets timeline setting. It shows you the top tweets from those you follow.

This is a giant step in the right direction, but its setting is buried. You must go into Settings > ­Account > Timeline personalisation, then flip the switch. Whether or not you have this turned on, you’ll still see a “While you were away” digest of tweets when you come back to the app after ­several hours.

Problem 3: How do I use this thing?

The most interesting complaint I heard was some variation of this: “I’m very tech-savvy, but the whole service confuses me. I didn’t know if I was using it right.”

Twitter isn’t as baffling as Snapchat. But at first it can be like learning a Morse code of @s, #s, retweets, quote tweets, DMs, etc.

Explanatory videos aside, Twitter needs to provide more basic ­instructions. When I sent a direct message (aka DM) to a follower, he responded: “I didn’t even know you could private message on here!”

Problem 4: Who am I supposed to talk to?

There are plenty of good conversations to jump into on Twitter if you’re brave enough to take the leap. And that’s the best way to get followers: share when you have something meaningful and constructive to contribute. If you’re, say, a marine biologist, you might just end up having great con­versations with your peers — if you can find them.