Observations from Twitter’s @replies fiasco

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on May 17, 2009 in Default | 0 comments

Most of you are probably aware of the Twitter @reply issue that happened a few days ago. For those unaware, Twitter removed the option to receive all @replies from users you weren’t following. This was disabled by default so as to not confuse or possibly intimidate the user with the immense amount of tweets that would appear in the stream. Twitter for its part, passed it on as a deliberate feature removal based on “usage patterns and feedback“. A second blog post then attributed it to the engineering issues, possibly relating to scalability. A third blog post then revealed Twitter decided to halfway backtrack on the change, only hiding messages which explicitly use the reply icon.

The users made their voice heard in a manner which was reminiscent of Digg’s HD-DVD backlash a little over two years ago. Users started tweeting in revolt of the feature change and tagging their replies with #fixreplies. Secondly, a lot of users found a way around the system. By preceding the username by “to:” or “>” users could send out a tweet addressed to a single user but distributed to all.

Key Observations

1. Twitter could have avoided a PR Disaster had they come clean with the issue to begin with. Removing a feature which was disabled by default (due to its possibly overwhelming nature) but still important to the power users and then further on miscommunicating the reason for its removal seemed like an insult to the intelligence of its user base. Leaving very little unchanged after the backtrack showed its feeble attempts at displaying a backbone of sorts.

2. When the users started ‘forcing’ replies to all their followers by their workarounds, that was, in principle, not very different to what Twitter was doing. Twitter’s removal of the option took away the choice from the users to view the replies, whereas the workaround forced by a single user took away the choice from his/her followers to not receive them.

Neither Twitter nor the users stand wrong or right. The company owns the service and has the right to change the product in any manner it pleases. The users will voice their opinions and try their best to get their way. We’ve seen this in the case of Digg, we’ve seen this in the case of Facebook too. The best thing to do is to learn the lesson from the incident, which in this case was the mishandling of communication and make sure at least that is avoided for next time.

Friendfeed is for me…

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Dec 8, 2008 in Default | 2 comments

Scoble just wrote on his blog an article titled “10 Reasons why Twitter is for you and FriendFeed is not” but it reads more like (for the most part) why Friendfeed is better than Twitter. In fact it’s borderline patronising. The primary difference between Twitter and Friendfeed is that the former is a very focused source of information while with Friendfeed there’s a multitude of ways in which information is gathered and created. Not only are we talking imports like Flickr, RSS, Youtube, Googlereader etc but also posting of messages, comments, links and likes.

I’ve used Twitter only for a week longer than I have Friendfeed but I still find a lot more material on FF than I do on Twitter. Scoble implies in his very first point that Twitter is not for you if you can’t handle an influx of a torrent of data but within the first day of use you realise you get an incredible amount of control over what information you see and what you don’t.

There’s a lot more on Friendfeed than I could possibly say here. Aimed more towards the power users  I do agree with Scoble that Friendfeed isn’t for everyone. Whether the lack of ability of mass adoption is a good or bad thing for Friendfeed is yet to be seen.

You can find me on http://friendfeed.com/bhavishya

Twitter to Facebook: Thanks, but no thanks.

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Nov 24, 2008 in Default | 0 comments

News has spilt over about a failed acquisition of Twitter by Facebook. Kara Swisher of Boom Town tells us that Facebook offered $500 million of Facebook Stock (at Microsoft’s valuation) to acquire Twitter which it rejected. Reasons? The first of course of whether the $500 million of stock represented $500 million or a more realistic $150 million. And more importantly, Twitter execs’ belief that they can eventually come up with a revenue model and take advantage of their exponentially growing user base.

Despite Facebook’s application certification programme, it is far from solving its own revenue problem and picking up Twitter would mean picking up its costs too.

However, the biggest worry for Twitter users is its fit in the Facebook platform and network. The Twitter API is a lot less restrictive than Facebook’s which has allowed users to use the service in a wide variety of ways. Think Twibble, Tweetdeck, Twhirl and Twitterfox to start up with. Any curtailment of this is sure to piss off a lot of users.

Besides the way I see it, there is not a lot Facebook stands to gain from Twitter apart from its large user base. Updates and commenting is already part of the functionality. So I’d say good call by the folks at Twitter. Forget acquisitions and focus on your scaling and revenue issues and all will be fine and dandy.