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Why Twitter's #fixreplies isn't a mistake
May. 14th, 2009 08:30 amThe Twittersphere's been all abuzz the last couple of days ever since Twitter announced they were making some changes to the way the @ settings worked. Users rebelled, and deluged Twitter with FAIL!!1! messages, demanding the settings be returned to the way they originally worked. Twitter "relented" after a day and returned partial functionality, but for a lot of the user who were complaining this change wasn't enough.
The tech blogs quickly fired off articles critical of Twitter's actions, and wondering if Twitter had a hidden motive for making the change. TechCrunch may have lead the charge, with headlines like Trouble Right Here in Twitter City, KISS FAIL. You Can Now See Twitter Replies Sometimes, Except When You Can’t., and Twitter’s Spectacularly Awful 24 Hours.
I think the real clue was in Twitter's second blog post about this, which stated: "The engineering team reminded me that there were serious technical reasons why that setting had to go or be entirely rebuilt—it wouldn't have lasted long even if we thought it was the best thing ever." It also states, "One of the strongest signals is that folks were using this setting to discover and follow new and interesting accounts—this is something we absolutely want to support."
Since I've been part of this sort of cycle a few times, I can see there are two perspectives here: users reaction and developer needs. From a user perspective, what they mostly see is "You gave me a feature, then you took it away. I want it back!" Seems like a reasonable request, right?
But look at things from Twitter's point of view. The engineers are saying, "Our current @ display system is working right now, but only barely. As Twitter grows, we're coming up against some serious technical limitations." Heck, for all I know Twitter's explosive growth has been straining the @ system, which wasn't designed to handle the sort of traffic it's been pumping out. As they said, "...it wouldn't have lasted long even if we thought it was the best thing ever." And to top it off, only 3% of their users actually used the existing system.
What's something worse than user backlash about the removal of the feature? The entire feature (or maybe even the entire system) coming crashing down because it collapsed under its own weight -- which would cause a lot more negative feedback and probably be a lot harder to fix. At least this way, they got to shut down the feature in a controlled fashion.
Twitter is also succeeding on this issue becuase they're not just taking the raw feedback at face value. People are saying, "We like that feature, keep it in." What they mean, however, is "We like a simple system for discovering new users, and we'd like to have one." Apparently Twitter is working on just such a system, but it's not ready yet. I can only guess that they estimated the @ system was going to break before the replacement system was ready, or that instituting the new system required the old system to be shut off first.
If Twitter made any mistakes, it was in not explaining this in detail up front. If they're first blog post had read "Hey everyone, we know you like our @ system, however it's got some severe technical limitations and is about to break so we've got to shut it down. We're sorry you won't have a simple discovery system for a while, but rest assured we're building a replacement system that will scale better. We'll get it out to you as soon as we can."
Even with that sort of up-front disclosure, I'm sure a lot of users would have stuck with "You took something away from me" and left it at that. Hopefully Twitter can get their replacement system up and running soon -- that'll be the best panacea #fixreplies.
The tech blogs quickly fired off articles critical of Twitter's actions, and wondering if Twitter had a hidden motive for making the change. TechCrunch may have lead the charge, with headlines like Trouble Right Here in Twitter City, KISS FAIL. You Can Now See Twitter Replies Sometimes, Except When You Can’t., and Twitter’s Spectacularly Awful 24 Hours.
I think the real clue was in Twitter's second blog post about this, which stated: "The engineering team reminded me that there were serious technical reasons why that setting had to go or be entirely rebuilt—it wouldn't have lasted long even if we thought it was the best thing ever." It also states, "One of the strongest signals is that folks were using this setting to discover and follow new and interesting accounts—this is something we absolutely want to support."
Since I've been part of this sort of cycle a few times, I can see there are two perspectives here: users reaction and developer needs. From a user perspective, what they mostly see is "You gave me a feature, then you took it away. I want it back!" Seems like a reasonable request, right?
But look at things from Twitter's point of view. The engineers are saying, "Our current @ display system is working right now, but only barely. As Twitter grows, we're coming up against some serious technical limitations." Heck, for all I know Twitter's explosive growth has been straining the @ system, which wasn't designed to handle the sort of traffic it's been pumping out. As they said, "...it wouldn't have lasted long even if we thought it was the best thing ever." And to top it off, only 3% of their users actually used the existing system.
What's something worse than user backlash about the removal of the feature? The entire feature (or maybe even the entire system) coming crashing down because it collapsed under its own weight -- which would cause a lot more negative feedback and probably be a lot harder to fix. At least this way, they got to shut down the feature in a controlled fashion.
Twitter is also succeeding on this issue becuase they're not just taking the raw feedback at face value. People are saying, "We like that feature, keep it in." What they mean, however, is "We like a simple system for discovering new users, and we'd like to have one." Apparently Twitter is working on just such a system, but it's not ready yet. I can only guess that they estimated the @ system was going to break before the replacement system was ready, or that instituting the new system required the old system to be shut off first.
If Twitter made any mistakes, it was in not explaining this in detail up front. If they're first blog post had read "Hey everyone, we know you like our @ system, however it's got some severe technical limitations and is about to break so we've got to shut it down. We're sorry you won't have a simple discovery system for a while, but rest assured we're building a replacement system that will scale better. We'll get it out to you as soon as we can."
Even with that sort of up-front disclosure, I'm sure a lot of users would have stuck with "You took something away from me" and left it at that. Hopefully Twitter can get their replacement system up and running soon -- that'll be the best panacea #fixreplies.
