Leverage lists. Lists on Twitter are quite powerful but they're woefully underused for a few reasons:
- shit UI that demotes them in favor of the following
- users net notified when they are put on lists and sometimes use it as an excuse to block
- you can subscribe to other people's lists (good) or have private lists (also good) but you can't search for lists, which is fucking stupid
Curated or open-source lists are a good way to take the information already in Twitter's social graph and turbocharge it, creating real value for others. If you look at CSPAN, you cna find lists for members of the House, Senate, etc. Now imagine that generalized to every state, organized by party and so on. Imagine lists of all broadcast journalists in a particular media market, or all employees of a particular broadcasting company. Etc etc. In many respects it's like verification on Twitter, but with significantly greater transparency.
Could lists be abused? For sure, kiwifarms types would try to create 'lolcows' lists and add people they disliked to troll them. You might want to think hard about whether all lists lists should be left up to individual curators or some should be public and shared ownership. But they're a tool where you can build off what already exists and deliver significant added value to early adopters, which is what helped Twitter get off the ground.
Also, consider not sharing following/followers (lists or #s) publicly, which turn into a vanity contest. Replies/retweets are where the real interesting social graph action is anyway.
Show me something about a person's analytics on their profile. If they're an abject self-promoter who posts 1000x a day, make that obvious. Don't just reward preferential attachments so that people are incentivized to build up massive followings and then service them with obligatory vapid content. I want to see something about how much a person really interacts or if they're just a billboard in human form.