Twitter recently began rolling out a new retweet feature.  I’m one of the lucky few who is now in the private beta.  Mashable had a particularly good writeup about how it will work.  The feature has been greeted with a fair amount of controversy.  So what is it about this feature that Twitter is screwing up so badly?  To answer this, I think it’s interesting to revisit some of Twitter’s other feature rollouts.

The Good: Threaded Comments

Sometime in August of 2008, Twitter quietly added threaded comments to its service.  Essentially, they added hooks in the API, as well as features in their own web page, to allow users to see the tweets to which people were responding.  Before this feature, there were no “responding to @soandso” links on tweets.  You essentially had to guess your way through the thread of a conversation.

Twitter added this feature when then-rival Friendfeed showed up on the social networking scene.  One of Friendfeed’s most noticeable features was its ability to thread conversations.  Prominent twitterers like Robert Scoble and Dave Winer took notice, and started taking their conversations to Friendfeed, where they were more easily followed.  People started asking aloud why Twitter couldn’t have this feature, and how long it would be before everyone abandoned Twitter for Friendfeed’s superior conversations (not to mention uptime – fail whales were a lot more frequent in those days).

Twitter added the feature within weeks.

The Good: Lists

Most people who use Twitter, especially so-called “Power-Users,” don’t use Twitter’s web interface as their main interaction with the service.  Instead, they use a client to watch and tweet in ways that are most productive to them.  Two of the most popular twitter clients are Tweetdeck and Seesmic Desktop.  Among the most useful features of these clients is the ability to maintain “lists” of friends.  This allows users to segment their friends and follow different types of conversations – one might be professional contacts, another might be friends from “real life,” another might be local twitterers, etc.

There are a couple of downfalls to this: 1.) the lists aren’t portable.  Switching clients means you lose your lists.  2.) the lists aren’t “shareable” with your friends.  Friend discovery is one of the hardest things for Twitter newbies to overcome, and list sharing would help immensely with discovery.

Again, people started wondering publicly why twitter couldn’t solve this problem.  Why couldn’t they allow its users to create lists right within Twitter?  That could potentially solve both the sharing problem, and the portability problem.  People began rolling their own lists outside of Twitter.

Twitter listened, and created their own list feature with much fanfare several months ago.

The Bad: Replies

A few months ago, Twitter abruptly removed a feature whereby users could see replies by someone they are following, to someone they are not following.  This feature removal was greeted with harsh criticism by some users.  Many used the feature for friend discovery, and were unhappy that it was taken away from them.  Before it was removed, the feature could always be turned off (indeed, it was turned off by default).  Yet twitter’s official explanation was the following:

Based on usage patterns and feedback, we’ve learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow—it’s a good way to stay in the loop. However, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don’t follow in your timeline is undesirable. Today’s update removes this undesirable and confusing option.

Few bought this explanation. If the feature could simply be disabled, and if it was already disabled by default, then what was the harm of just leaving it there?  The truth came out in the Twitter blog the following day:

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.

The truth was, it was not removed because of “usage patterns and feedback” at all.  It was removed to solve a technical scaling issue.  Twitter tried to cover it up by selling it to its user base as something they actually asked for.

The Bad: Retweets

Now Twitter is trying to sell its users on this new Retweet redesign. Why does it leave a foul taste in my mouth?

Retweeting is a great example of Twitter teaching us what it wants to be. The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact and the more efficient dissemination of information across the entire Twitter ecosystem is something we very much want to support. That’s why we’re planning to formalize retweeting by officially adding it to our platform and Twitter.com.

Like the reply overhaul above, I’m not buying this explanation.  It’s being sold to its users as something they’ll want, yet no one has asked for it.  Why are they doing this when so many people are opposed to it?

The Real Reason I Think They’re Doing It

Today, Twitter’s greatest asset is their data.  The fleeting thoughts of millions of users is a goldmine to somebody, somewhere.  The higher the quality of this data, and the better it’s organized hierarchically, the more it’s worth.  The potential miners of this data will find more value in it if they are able to easily assess the “virality” (yes, I just made that word up) of a thought, tweet, or link.  Hunting down a trending topic to its source leads researchers to the influencers of twitterdom, and people will pay good money to get that information.

In short, Twitter is implementing this feature for their own benefit, and trying to sell it as something it’s users will like.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with trying to monetize Twitter – heck, I hope they’re successful in figuring out how to keep the service going.  But I’m a bit resentful that they are trying to convince people that they want a feature when clearly they do not.

Missing The Point of Retweets

I think that, central to all of this, Twitter is ignoring why people retweet.  Echoing someone else’s tweet is a subtle endorsement of an idea, and it is important to be able to preface an endorsement with one’s own sentiments.  The new feature leaves no room for explanation or commentary.  In fact, I’ll occasionally use Re-tweets to share an opposing view (e.g., “Someone still doesn’t get it.  RT @ev: Reminder about new Retweet function: You can turn it off on a per-user basis. Which is hot.”) .  The new feature doesn’t allow that.

I suspect people will still re-tweet the old way, but start using the “via” convention instead of the “RT” convention to do so.  That’s what I plan on doing.  Unfortunately for Twitter, the new retweet feature will only add value to their data if people decide to actually use it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 11:36 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.