Twitter, the non-social network social network has announced a new web interface.
Some initial observations and questions:
– Why does the introductory video take nearly 90 seconds to get to the demonstration? That is nearly three times the length of a television commercial. For a company that originated with brevity in mind… wow.
– This appears to be a simple effort to move people to Twitter as a product (not a platform that you use other means to access it) in order to control the eyeballs and eventually, add advertising and other means of monetization.
– How many people use the web interface currently? I doubt this re-design will have the same backlash a site like Facebook expects. Not enough people use the web interface, they’ve moved to third-party apps and this is a push to get Twitter-proper back in control.
– Will Tweetie for Mac ever be updated now? Or is this Twitter’s approach to become the product *and* the platform on desktop computers?
– How can designers like TweetyGotBack get back into a competitive position of designing wallpapers with a huge stockpile of existing themes? No matter what they do, they step on the toes that helped get them where they are today.
– Is there even enough room for wallpapers (with your contact information in the gutter) to even exist on this new design? I surely hope not. Who visits a twitter profile only to go and type in another URL pertaining to how to find you (use the website link in your profile). Social media experts…
And with that said, I don’t know why I use Twitter. Alex and I were chatting and I’ve come to the realization I get nearly no value from it. Perhaps that speaks to the people I follow. It’s not that they aren’t great people, I just don’t like their online personalities. Instead of the typical nerd values you expect to see from the people you know in person (quiet, smart, witty, polite) you get the vices (self-importance, loud, benign). I’m the first to admit I look at my profile and realize, I don’t think I would follow me.
Dev,
You touch on an key fact about human social interactions — presence. I think “human presence” is a continum with high presence requiring high bandwidth for the brain. Let me illustrate.
If I am in a face-to-face conversation, all 5 senses are engaged and the brain bandwidth is very high and, so is “presence”. In person conversations with the rich mix of tone of voice, facial expression, body language, clothing, and oder engage our brain at a very high level.
At the other end is twitter – 140 characters of text with no room for nuance. As I’ve observed with Email, the “voice” of the sender is often received as abrupt, rude, irritating, loud, etc. even if that wasn’t the state of mind of the sender. I believe “text alone” cuts out so much brain bandwidth (as in only a limited visual connection, text mostly), it contributes to this perception by the receiver.
Email (and Twitter) provides a level of annonimity. I think we act differently when we are face-to-face than when we arent’, and the more base characteristics of our personalities often emerge unchecked. For example, wee rehearse what we will say to someone in our mind, but it frequently comes out much “softer” when we have that difficult conversation in person. I’m not sure why this is, but it is.
Thanks for the post.
Agreed. In fact, I suspect much of what people say (type) often wouldn’t even be considered (let alone “softened”) if they were speaking to someone in person.