I'm a huge Twitter fan, and not a Twitter conservative stick in the mud who reflexively opposes all changes.
However, I think in this instance, users are baffled as to why Twitter would even trial this functionality when it betrays a lack of understanding of what is usable, and what is going to promote terrible user experiences. i.e. this reply functionality would seem to exacerbate the problem of being stuck in endless convos where other people leave your handle in long after you stopped taking part. It's almost as if the devs don't use Twitter...
I use Twitter a lot too, and I don't reflexively hate every change they make either. I like it a lot as a social network. But one anecdote...
It's almost as if the devs don't use Twitter...
They probably use it -- but possibly they don't participate in it, as a social network, very much.
I follow and RT a lot of funny shit, and occasionally ironic/subtweet stuff. One time, I remember a Twitter dev -- after the debacle about testing extending the character limit to 10k characters, among other things -- tweeted, posting about how "We aren't idiots, and we aren't going to ruin twitter, get a grip." That tweet he posted quickly gathered over +2,000 RTs. Most of them being ironic, highlighting massively bad decisions Twitter made in the past to the detriment of its users (such as killing almost all 3rd party clients) -- or simply boggled by the fact they can't understand "a 10k character limit fundamentally destroys what twitter is" (this one is pretty obvious TBH, although I do admit I don't know if they ever even tested the 10k limit thing). I'm pretty sure I RT'd it, myself, just for shits and giggles.
The same individual then later tweeted in the day "Wow, I've never had anything blow up like my last retweet, with the irony and subtweeting. I've never had my tweets even leave my own follower circle." The guy had ~900 followers, and, well, was a Twitter developer (for reference: I'm a nobody and have almost ~1,300).
Now I don't mean to rag on the dude endlessly -- Twitter as a social thing can be fickle and not everybody is super popular or whatever. It certainly has a "way of working", depending on what sphere you find yourself in. But the fact that a product developer seemed to be caught offguard at ironic RTs of his statement, and that they've never even had their tweets leave their circle and seen the results... It just indicates a massive gap between what the developers see, and what users actually do with the platform.
It's like, no wonder they don't (apparently) understand concepts like people harassing or spamming. Most of the developers probably don't even have big enough circles to see it, let alone understand how it, or Twitter users, tend to operate at "scale" (larger number of followers, or simply very frequent use of Twitter despite follower count). You can't understand it by looking at analytics data -- you have to participate in order to understand how people interact. I think Twitter developers probably use the product, maybe even a lot -- but likely don't participate in the ways many of us do.
Comments
I'm a huge Twitter fan, and not a Twitter conservative stick in the mud who reflexively opposes all changes.
However, I think in this instance, users are baffled as to why Twitter would even trial this functionality when it betrays a lack of understanding of what is usable, and what is going to promote terrible user experiences. i.e. this reply functionality would seem to exacerbate the problem of being stuck in endless convos where other people leave your handle in long after you stopped taking part. It's almost as if the devs don't use Twitter...
Devil's advocate: Maybe they're challenging their own assumptions about the twitter experience?
This is something you often do in game design: Rather than say "pah, that'll never work", you try it out and see what happens.
I use Twitter a lot too, and I don't reflexively hate every change they make either. I like it a lot as a social network. But one anecdote...
They probably use it -- but possibly they don't participate in it, as a social network, very much.
I follow and RT a lot of funny shit, and occasionally ironic/subtweet stuff. One time, I remember a Twitter dev -- after the debacle about testing extending the character limit to 10k characters, among other things -- tweeted, posting about how "We aren't idiots, and we aren't going to ruin twitter, get a grip." That tweet he posted quickly gathered over +2,000 RTs. Most of them being ironic, highlighting massively bad decisions Twitter made in the past to the detriment of its users (such as killing almost all 3rd party clients) -- or simply boggled by the fact they can't understand "a 10k character limit fundamentally destroys what twitter is" (this one is pretty obvious TBH, although I do admit I don't know if they ever even tested the 10k limit thing). I'm pretty sure I RT'd it, myself, just for shits and giggles.
The same individual then later tweeted in the day "Wow, I've never had anything blow up like my last retweet, with the irony and subtweeting. I've never had my tweets even leave my own follower circle." The guy had ~900 followers, and, well, was a Twitter developer (for reference: I'm a nobody and have almost ~1,300).
Now I don't mean to rag on the dude endlessly -- Twitter as a social thing can be fickle and not everybody is super popular or whatever. It certainly has a "way of working", depending on what sphere you find yourself in. But the fact that a product developer seemed to be caught offguard at ironic RTs of his statement, and that they've never even had their tweets leave their circle and seen the results... It just indicates a massive gap between what the developers see, and what users actually do with the platform.
It's like, no wonder they don't (apparently) understand concepts like people harassing or spamming. Most of the developers probably don't even have big enough circles to see it, let alone understand how it, or Twitter users, tend to operate at "scale" (larger number of followers, or simply very frequent use of Twitter despite follower count). You can't understand it by looking at analytics data -- you have to participate in order to understand how people interact. I think Twitter developers probably use the product, maybe even a lot -- but likely don't participate in the ways many of us do.