Screwing Your Vocal Minority
Twitter’s old habits die hard
The new Tweetbot for Mac is good. Very good, even. But it’s just short of great. And that’s not Tweetbot developer Tapbots’ fault, it’s Twitter’s. The APIs to make it truly great — support for group DMs, polls, and bookmarks, to name a few — simply don’t exist, or aren’t exposed to third-party clients.¹ And the really disturbing thing is that Tweetbot (and all other third-party clients) may be about to get a lot worse. Or worse. Again, thanks to Twitter.
If this feels like 2010 to you,² you’re not alone. It feels like that to me too. And to many others. Back then, Twitter meandered through a bunch of policy decisions that at first neutered many third-party apps and services, and eventually killed most of them. A few years back, it seemed like they were issuing a mea culpa for that time period. And yet, here we are.
Anyway, I don’t really want to have that debate again. Frankly, it’s boring at this point, and nothing changes. Twitter gonna Twitter.³ Obviously, there is nuance to each of these decisions that those of us outside the company don’t and can’t know. But sometimes — okay, often — I think it would behoove the company to take a step back and look at all of this from the 10,000 foot view. On an decision-by-decision basis, what they’re doing undoubtedly makes sense to them. As a whole, from afar, it’s pretty batty.
But the actual point I want to get across here is one that applies to many companies. Twitter, like so many others, undoubtedly rationalizes changes they make because they can back them up with data. This will impact so few people so… let’s do it. Hard to argue with that.
Except when the data are stupid.
As John Gruber noted on this situation a few days ago:
Twitter management obviously wants to steer people to their first-party mobile app and desktop website. I get that. But they already have that: the overwhelming number of Twitter users use exactly those products to access the service. What Twitter management seems to be missing is that many of its most influential users — including yours truly, yes — have been on the platform a long time and have a high tendency to be among those who not just use, but depend upon third-party clients.
Yes, there are far more users of Twitter than just the “influential” ones. Obviously. And in many cases, I actually think it’s fine and fair to downplay the impact such users can have on the overall trajectory of a service. Many of us are often loud and obnoxious about any and all changes, but we’re loud and obnoxious to our audiences who probably already largely agree with us.
What I think Twitter (and again, others) miss is that it’s not so much about the explicit influence, it’s far more implicit. And some of it is painfully obvious. It’s the fact that such users are often the most devoted, caring, and passionate ones. And sometimes, they’re at the forefront of what the rest of the user base will eventually feel because they’re so into the product. Other times they offer a power user perspective, which can be useful at times in showing how the product works (and doesn’t) in the ultimate “success state” of extreme usage. There are many other simple, subtle things that could be mentioned here.
In a way, this reminds me of the mistake Apple has been making with regard to their “Pro” users (and to a lesser extent, in the education market). Apple looks at both the overall number of such users and the bottom line and sees relatively small numbers. Again, the data says: ‘nothing much to see here, do as you wish’. But the data doesn’t understand the trickle down (and trickle up) effects of such decisions. In other words, there are intangibles here that data can’t know and as such, can’t take into account.⁴ It’s the kind of indirect insight that only someone very, very tuned in to a product can sense.
All of this is to say, it’s fucking insane that Twitter has killed their native Mac client not once, but twice. I don’t care if it only had a hundred thousand users, a thousand users, or a hundred users, it’s the abandonment of those users that’s insane for the reasons listed above. Yes, every company needs focus and even the biggest companies need to allocate resources in appropriate ways. Again, what I’d argue is that this is an appropriate way. Maybe the most appropriate way, in many ways, data be damned.
And so if the above is fucking insane, making the above decision and then making the decision to severely neuter the third-party apps that were filling in the holes you dug is absolutely mega ultra batshit fucking insane. The fact that so many third-parties were filling these holes should say enough — they’re not just doing this for fun, they’re doing it because there are holes to be filled. What Twitter is saying, explicably — yet inexplicably from the 10,000 foot view — is that they like holes. They really, really just enjoy having holes in their product. And if you’re a user who doesn’t like to use products with holes? Well, you can use — nope, actually, you can’t.⁵ And also, if you happen to be amongst our most loyal and passionate users, fuck you.
² Or 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, etc.
³ Which is more frustrating than ever because this is their time!
⁴ Okay, I’m sure on some level, data can know this, but it would be pretty hard to look for and to pull, I imagine.
⁵ And don’t get me started on the, “well, you can use our website” bullshit. This is Twitter’s way of giving us the finger with a smile. The website is a hodgepodge of features and functionality. It’s awful to look at. And the real kick in the nuts: even it is not feature complete!
