Think Twitter needs groups? Then you’re missing the point.

I’ve heard Ev say that the #1 requested feature for Twitter is the ability to create groups.  I’ve also heard that TweetDeck’s ability to do this is one of the main reasons its the top Twitter client.  And there is no shortage of sites creating their own ways for us to make groups in Twitter possible.  But people, you’re applying old rules to new technology, and in the process missing the point completely.

What we need with Twitter is not the ability to put people into groups.  What’s the old saying, oh yeah, “content is king”.  We follow people because what they say is interesting and in some way relevant to us.  Yes, there are people we follow simply because they are our friends, however the more our “friends” post tweets that aren’t relevant to us, the more we’re going to consider unfollowing them because that chatter will simply clog up our Twitter feed.

What we really need is a way to organize the content of our Twitter feed.  I should have a “group” that is all the entrepreneurship/startup talk that the people I follow are tweeting.  Yes, you can create searches to organize your views but you can only do this via keyword.  And you can ask everyone you follow to start using hashtags for certain topics, but no one is going to do that.

We need an easy way to flag/tag our tweets as we make them without having to add hashtags and guess if they are the right ones (for ex: #startup vs. #start-up).  This will allow people to view content that they are interested and bypass the crap.  Personally, I don’t care where 95% of the people I follow on Twitter are going for lunch today.  Sorry, but I’m not a stalker.

Today, Twitter largely works by following people and hoping that you enjoy 75% of what they say.  The problem is, when you start to follow enough people, that 25% starts to add up very quickly.  We need a way to organize our Twitter experience and one that is cross-platform (the groups I create on TweetDeck don’t port over to Tweetie, for ex).

I know a lot of you want Twitter groups.  I’d love to hear why.