How Twitter Built User Habits and Guns N' Roses

I watched Josh Elman live at habitsummit.com on March 25  How Twitter Built User Habits . Believe it or not when twitter came out, Tweeter  started as an exotic, yes-I-tried-it-once.

Josh is guy who made Tweeter part of our lives, a new habit so powerful that unpopular governments can trigger street revolution is they ban it.

This talk is one of the most relevant learning in my life as product creator, product manager, whatever you call it You may have a great idea. You have the code. But this is not the essence.

Understanding is how you know whether you have a visitor or a regular user. 

Visitors

- Just come once

- Come via a prompt

- Don't remember your name

Regulars

- Use daily/monthly

- Come directly

- Top of mind

Josh  realized that if you came to Twitter 1-6x/month, there was a low chance that Twitter had become a habit for you. But if you came 7 - 8x/month, then you were using it enough and it had become a habit. For Twitter this type of insight from in-depth analysis was invaluable and moved them from something that was mildly working, to something that now has 232 million active users.

I am very surprised that this video has only 65 views on YouTube. But this video holds the key to success to almost any service intended to be used in the high tech industry.

It is amazing that Guns N' Roses - November Rain video has 236 million views, slightly more than Tweeter user base.

This is food for thought. We can inspire from both successes