So, the intertubes are awash today with people venting their spleens about Twitter’s decision to stop sending replies by people you do follow, but to people you don’t follow, to your main Twitter feed. Previously you had the option either way, and now some people are getting their panties in a bunch about it.
There are two things to say about this issue:
- Personally, I don’t want to see all the random replies to other people I don’t follow. I already deliberately only follow a small number of people, beacuse frankly I don’t have time to sift through a huge list of tweets every day. I have absolutely no idea how anyone copes with following more than about 10 people who tweet regularly, and still get something done in the day, nevermind seeing all the secondary replies. Am I just inefficient at processing large numbers of posts, or do I just have a staggeringly lower level of patience than the average Twitter user? The way I have things right now, I read every one of the posts from people I follow, because I consider them interesting, and that takes little time. I couldn’t do that if I was following 100 people and their replies to other contacts too, so I’d either have to lie (ie stick to etiquette and follow them, but then filter out most of what they say on the client), or just spend all day reading Twitter. So personally, this seems a sensible choice – you can always use the Twitter web if you really have nothing better to do but surf Twitter, or browse your friends ‘following’ list if you’re desperate to mine the system for new contacts.
- Twitter is free. If you paid nothing for a service, you are entitled to offer your constructive feedback which the providers may choose to listen to, but you are not entitled to have a major tantrum about it. As Matt Asay suggests, if you care about the service that much, then you should probably be paying for it – and God knows, Twitter needs a business model other than the typical Web 2.0 “Attract viewers ……. profit!” fantasy right now. On the whole, the Internet needs a slap to wake up its users from the bloated sense of entitlement they’ve developed over the years, fueled by a huge number of startups that delude people into thinking they can expect everything for nothing. 100% free models don’t work (yes, I know, I’m an open source advocate, but that doesn’t mean I believe that you can give everything away) – they are a complimentary aspect, or a stop-gap until you can develop a real model or pursuade some sucker to acquire you before the hype train grinds to a halt. Eventually, these cycles of pretending that you can get premium service for free will end, and everyone will have to face up to the reality that ‘freeloaders’ have a place (building momentum, awareness etc), but ultimately they’re at the bottom of the food chain. Plankton are vital to the oceanic ecosystem, but no-one asks them for their opinion.
May 14th, 2009 at 9:59 am
RE: Business Model.
You are right… I mean they don’t even have any web advertising anywhere. I have not got a clue how they stay afloat. I wonder when the switch part of the bait & switch is gonna happen…
May 14th, 2009 at 11:09 am
I hope they find a business model that works, but I think it’s going to mean a bitter dose of reality for both the company and users, more so than in previous years. When MySpace started to monetise itself after being sold, it didn’t work that well even though they had some pretty lucrative agreements. All that happened there is that users rapidly moved to Facebook, and so went the merry-go-round of users ‘following the freebies’, moving from VC-funded startup to VC-funded startup and jumping ship as soon as they, you know, tried to make a business out of it (usually after being acquired). It’s why I lambast Facebook as just another link in a very long chain of basically dishonest businesses.
With the recession and coming up to 3 cycles of hyped internet businesses I’m not sure there will be too many more ‘free ships’ for users to hop onto when they get outraged that Twitter / Facebook et al finally have to make some money out of them to justify all the tens of millions they’ve burned through getting to this stage. I’m not sure the historical approach of basically selling hokey treasure maps to investors (“there’s gold in them thar social networking hills mister, yee-har!”) has too many more legs in it before people start asking for better actual results. I think the days of internet users being able to expect everything for free are numbered, I think subscription models or microtransactions are inevitable for all these sites. And you know, it’s all a bit more above-board that way anyway – *someone* is paying for all this infrastructure after all, and if you really care about it, you should pay for it. The idea that you can fund huge operations through advertising has been pretty much debunked now – unless you’re Google, who can do it simply because of their massive, cross-site scale.