Interesting that no-one has mentioned weibo, the chinese "copy" of twitter (hint: it's not actually a copy). I think weibo is a fantastic product that's ahead of twitter in many respects.
Just off the top of my head, weibo has:
- the "event" grouping that dcurtis mentions and a better topic grouping system ("micro topics")
- rich multimedia as a first class citizen (photo galleries especially are very popular)
- payments built-in - you can donate to or pay anyone on the platform. This is especially used in time of disaster. Weibo escrows the money for a bit to make sure the recipient is legitimate, btw
- properly threaded conversations, easy to follow
- a much more fleshed-out verified account system and the dev integration to connect companies to the system
I'm aware that what works in china may not work for twitter, but looking at what they're doing seems like a pretty good starting point.
Just off the top of my head, weibo has:
- the "event" grouping that dcurtis mentions and a better topic grouping system ("micro topics")
- rich multimedia as a first class citizen (photo galleries especially are very popular)
- payments built-in - you can donate to or pay anyone on the platform. This is especially used in time of disaster. Weibo escrows the money for a bit to make sure the recipient is legitimate, btw
- properly threaded conversations, easy to follow
- a much more fleshed-out verified account system and the dev integration to connect companies to the system
I'm aware that what works in china may not work for twitter, but looking at what they're doing seems like a pretty good starting point.