Twitter’s Indecision
Note: this post was adapted and expanded upon from my newsletter published this week.In taking a step back, it seems to me that Twitter’s two most recent fiascos may be related.
First, Twitter decided not to ban Alex Jones. Because he hadn’t violated their rules. Except he had. But that didn’t matter. It was about going forward. And then he broke the rules again. And then they didn’t ban again. Except they sort of did. But not really.
Second, Twitter just cut off access to many APIs vital to third-party developers. They said they were going to do this. Then pushed the date. Then granted exceptions. Also they said they were going to do this years ago. And then did. And then didn’t.
Twitter has to be the most indecisive company on the planet. They only say they’re going to do things in order to showcase that they’re not actually going to do them, on second thought.
In many ways, Twitter is Bizarro Facebook. That company makes strong, definitive decisions. Of late, I’d argue that they’re often the wrong decisions. But still, they pull triggers. And we collectively run for cover.
I’m honestly undecided which approach is worse. Perhaps because I’m also quite indecisive by nature (see: the preceding sentence). I’ll go with Facebook. But I’m not so sure.
Look, no one is saying any of these decisions are easy — they’re obviously not and undoubtedly far more complicated than what we can see on the surface. But at the end of the day, you need to make a decision.
Yesterday, I shared an article about Jim Hackett’s attempted turnaround at Ford — one key blurb:
“Corporations tend to reward action over thinking,” Mr. Hackett said in an interview. “But the truth is…you’ll find the companies that didn’t do the deep thinking and acted quickly have to redo things.”
A bunch of folks jumped all over this notion (on Twitter, of course) as an excuse for lack of action. I’m inclined to give Hackett more of the benefit of the doubt as Ford, a 115-year-old company, undoubtedly has far more baggage than say, Twitter, a 12-year-old company.¹ Plus, later in the article, it notes Hackett’s strict adherence to a decision once it has been decided:
Since he started, Mr. Hackett has pushed for connecting all of Ford’s vehicles to the internet. The company had fallen behind rival GM, which introduced built-in wireless connectivity in 2015 across most of its lineup. Ford executives dithered over the decision for years, worried the cost couldn’t be justified.
“Jim said, ‘Look, we’ve made the decision…so I don’t want you revisiting this,’ ” said Hau Thai-Tang, Ford’s purchasing and product development chief. Ford plans to connect 100% of its U.S.-sold cars by 2019.
This reminds me more of Jeff Bezos’ famous “disagree and commit.” A quote by JFK also comes to mind…
Twitter, on the other hand, constantly seems to be making the decision not to decide. And they don’t seem to realize that’s not actually a decision. And that such indecision manifests itself quite publicly in the issues we’re seeing now.
Case in point: with the API changes, Twitter clearly thinks they’re being decisive. The issue here is that many of us have seen this play out before, in the exact same way, multiple times, over the past decade. Maybe this time is different. But probably not.
Twitter is killing its APIs in order to announce in 6 months that they’re reinstating them. Rinse. Repeat. Just you wait.
I could go on, but I feel like I complain about this too much already. With all of Facebook’s very real troubles, it feels like Twitter had an opportunity to shine. Not as a better Facebook, but as something entirely different. But they can’t seem to do that. Because they can’t seem to decide how to do that. Because they can’t seem to decide much of anything, really.
¹ Yes, I’m also inclined to give Hackett more of a benefit of the doubt for the fact that he corrected the ship that is Michigan’s football program after Dave Brandon almost ran it into the ground. (Which he went on to do with Toys R’ Us instead…)
