Interesting that no-one has mentioned weibo, the chinese &quot;copy&quot; of twitter (hint: it&#x27;s not actually a copy). I think weibo is a fantastic product that&#x27;s ahead of twitter in many respects.<p>Just off the top of my head, weibo has:<p>- the &quot;event&quot; grouping that dcurtis mentions and a better topic grouping system (&quot;micro topics&quot;)<p>- rich multimedia as a first class citizen (photo galleries especially are very popular)<p>- 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<p>- properly threaded conversations, easy to follow<p>- a much more fleshed-out verified account system and the dev integration to connect companies to the system<p>I&#x27;m aware that what works in china may not work for twitter, but looking at what they&#x27;re doing seems like a pretty good starting point.