Are Users Holding Back Twitter’s Progress?

The current strategy at Twitter is clearly not working as user growth continues to elude them. Clearly a new direction is desperately needed in order to attract new users although whenever Twitter tries something new even if they are minor changes, the existing user base has a temper tantrum and reacts by leaving the platform. It looks to me as if Twitter is caught between a rock and a hard place. 

Although Tweets currently appear in our feeds in reverse chronological order, however, recent reports suggest the possible introduction of a new algorithmic timeline bearing a format incredibly similar to that of Facebook, which has led to many users accusing the social network of having an identity crisis of sorts. 

The idea behind this latest change is to solve Twitter’s evident white noise problem where users struggle to find useful or engaging information from within the large volume of senseless tweets emanating from the network. The new algorithm would push promoted or popular tweets to the top of the feed so as to make it feel more relevant thus allowing users to quickly see what the majority are talking about. 

Ironically it was Twitter that then found itself trending under the hashtag #RIPTwitter after existing users started expressing their annoyance at the platform. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey quickly tweeted to set the record straight and offer assurances to the user base that they were not planning on reordering the feed timelines next week. 

Twitter has always been the place where users live-tweet anything and everything in real-time as it happens and those tweets show up at the top of the feeds, so to change this order by putting the more popular or promoted (a.k.a. paid) tweets on top thus burying the latest live tweets in the flowing river of tweets beneath would in essence take away what its users love about the platform in the first place. The bottom line is that nobody wants an algorithm deciding what they can or cannot see and most of all users do not want another Facebook clone on their hands.

The idea of prioritizing a tweet of someone's funny YouTube clip from a year ago over a live event unfolding was never going to be well received. Maybe its time for the leaders at Twitter towers to start listening to the list of improvements or features that their users really want rather than brainstorming their own ideas behind closed doors.

As users we love to consume events via tweets on Twitter as they occur live in the real world, so it seems rather disappointing that this was not taken into account before launching straight into the testing of the aforementioned change. On the other hand I do question the Twitter community’s perpetual schizophrenia and might even feel a bit of sympathy for the platform when its user base persistently grumbles about the lack of innovation and changes in the platform while at the same time equally becoming outraged with every new idea that Twitter strives to release!

The rumors around introducing an option that allows users to click and expand on a tweet to reveal a further up to 10,000 characters seemed like a reasonable idea in principle. But even this idea was quickly condemned by the howling mob. It looks like this particular social network is damned if they do and damned if they don’t in the eyes of their user-base. 

Fortunately in the case of the feed-order situation under discussion in this blog, the Verge were at hand to nullify any fears by confirming that there will be an opt-out mechanism from the algorithmic timeline feature that may or may not appear on the horizon. Only time will tell if Twitter provides such new optional features in order to attract new users on their elusive quest for growth without upsetting the existing users who are guilty of being a little stuck in their ways.

Jack Dorsey is once again being reminded that taking the reins of Twitter can be somewhat of a thankless task. Most users recognize that Twitter has more than a few problems, and pressure is now on to deliver meaningful change to the platform. 

However in the end perhaps the biggest change required at the social platform is in the attitude of its existing users who may need to be a little more open-minded about new approaches and become more accepting of new innovative ideas.

Nobody wants to see Twitter morph into a Facebook clone, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that the biggest obstacle in the way of Twitter’s progress are its users.

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