Comments on: Why #fixtweetie is important

By: Max Tatton-Brown

Max Tatton-Brown — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:38:40 +0000

Excellent summary of the situation. Twitter is a terribly amateurish organisation trying to deal with something far too big for them and also make some money along the way.

Be interesting to see what happens next now that retweets have been taken down. The worst bit of it all is that they haven’t given any explanation. Suppose they don’t see it as necessary until the US wakes up…

By: John H

John H — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:27:30 +0000

Oops, forgot to close my italics tag. Apols.

By: John H

John H — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:27:02 +0000

‘How long before we see Twitter “forking” … with a break-away faction producing “OpenTweetage” * (or some similar named platform) that allows people to use the service as *they* want to and not how the owners of the platform want to?’

Well, there’s already identi.ca…

By: prclarke

prclarke — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:23:15 +0000

James: you’re probably right: the idea of a pure separation between message content – and a client ecosystem which filters it – is in part my projection. And am thinking more about your point re untrammelled evolution. Within the constraints of Twitter’s architecture this particular degree of choice seems to me to be without drawback, provided that separation between content and client is preserved (clever client design amplifies the best and hides the worst).

What’s so concerning about the new RT approach is its step into greater control over actual message content.

By: Twitted by mikebutcher

Twitted by mikebutcher — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:12:21 +0000

[...] This post was Twitted by mikebutcher [...]

By: James Darling

James Darling — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:42:30 +0000

Well put. I think hardly any of it is correct, but I don’t think much is wrong either.

I’m not sure I agree with any “original, pure concept of Twitter”. It started as a quick way of keeping up with mates, mainly over SMS. Something I still miss. (as an aside, something I think RTs got in the way of, and I, like a lot of original ‘mates’ users, get very annoyed with)

Also “Taking away choice = bad”. Rarely as true as people think. Give me a sensible thought through convention any day. Choices sound great, how can you lose with more choice? By either having to become an expert at everything or making the wrong choices. Realising this core part of UX design is what has helped make Apple and Moo.com products great, and Microsoft create mess.

By: Gary Gale

Gary Gale — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:45:54 +0000

As per usual, a solid piece of bloggage. How long before we see Twitter “forking” … with a break-away faction producing “OpenTweetage” * (or some similar named platform) that allows people to use the service as *they* want to and not how the owners of the platform want to?

In the open source code communities, forking has become a necessary way of focussing attention back on the core competency of a project’s code base.

Could the community of Twitter benefit from this as well?

* OpenTweetage should be a GoogleWhack as soon as this comment hits the Mountain View search index.

By: Mauricio Reyes

Mauricio Reyes — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:38:42 +0000

This situation was always going to arise. As you pointed out Paul, it will get uglier between the owners Twitter, and the community rather than better, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Twitter has up until late last year built a system for the communuty, now they are refining it and creating value where they can in order to monetise it, this is impacting upon the creativity of the community. It is a tightrope for Twitter in juggling the happiness of the userbase with the economic demands they must ultimately meet.

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:24:30 +0000

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by Paul Clarke: the interesting story that lies behind #fixtweetie http://bit.ly/8tQm7m #tweetie #twitter #RTs…