DISQUS

AlexSchleber · 7 months ago

Totally agree with you Louis, see what I just wrote here:

http://alexschleber.posterous.com/my-comment-on...

In a word, @Biz explanation is baloney, and the tone of the posts is only getting MORE Orwellian. Plus this latest PR fail has none of all that "aw shucks FailWhale grass roots" cuddliness (which has already had them getting away with A LOT).

Oh, and @Victor, you are wrong: The users are what build the value of SOCIAL MEDIA. So it would behoove the people expecting to (someday) make money from their creation to treat that resource with some care. Anyone can throw up some servers and code, the value is in the USERS.

Victor Panlilio · 7 months ago

@Alex - I am NOT condoning the attitude or the behaviour of Twitter management. What I'm trying to get across is that Twitter is just one of many possible ways to publish content. If people are unhappy with Twitter, they can use other free or non-free alternatives. No one is being forced to use Twitter, or for that matter, FriendFeed, FaceBook, LinkedIn, or any of the other social media sites. Sites that meet user expectations will win users over. Sites that don't will drive users away. It was always thus.

Jesse Stay · 7 months ago

Is that a PC I see on your blog???

Louis Gray · 7 months ago

Yes, and I'm bald, Jesse.

Jesse Stay · 7 months ago

I guess the guy's mad at it so that's okay

Victor Panlilio · 7 months ago

So, let me see if I have this right... people use a free service, which they come to depend on, and then when the operators of the service change something, the freeloaders whine? Isn't this sort of like people at the Food Bank complaining they don't get fresh sushi with their day-old bread, or a junkie complaining that the needles in the free exchange program aren't sharp enough? People, get a grip -- if you're PAYING for something, you have a right to complain if it DOES NOT meet expectations to which you agreed. OTOH, if you're getting something FOR FREE, explain to me exactly how you have ANY right to bitch about the FREE product or service? You don't like it? Then use something else! Duh!

Lucretia (GeekMommy) Pruitt · 7 months ago

No, you don't have it right... Let's try it this way: Twitter has received MILLIONS of dollars in funding b/c of content generated by the users, data generated (again) by the users, and got some of their better (and more praiseworthy) features by paying attention early on to what the users were doing with their service. (Note: if you weren't around back then? The entire @ function arose because the user base created the shorthand and the Twitter developers implemented first linking, then replying, then viewing capabilities.)

The management & developers have never quite grasped that good change management doesn't consist of informing the user base after the fact of a change you have already implemented that impacts their usage & functionality, then waiting to see if it is accepted and having to "fix" whatever you've broken after the fact.

So let's recap: all of the money currently financing Twitter comes from content generated by the Users... but the powers that be at Twitter have this horrid tendency to try and kill the goose that lays their golden egg paycheck every couple of months by disregarding the source of their income. The service itself is not a viable commodity. Without millions of users creating interesting content? Twitter is just an internet based text messaging platform. There's a lot of those. Unfortunately, they can and do go under (see: pownce, rejaw, etc. etc.)

Victor Panlilio · 7 months ago

Although I never joined the WELL, I've been posting to USENET since the late 1980's, and to a few private discussion lists since the 1990's. For us Internet geezers, the excitement about Twitter, FriendFeed, etc. is, shall we say, amusing.

Lucretia (GeekMommy) Pruitt · 7 months ago

Annnnd I've had an active email account since 1979... your point being?

How does that in any way, shape or form address the issue?

Lucretia (GeekMommy) Pruitt · 7 months ago

Oh, and for the record? No one ever poured millions and millions of dollars into Usenet as the VCs have into Twitter. The oldest posts that show under my actual name there are from 1996 on the alt.lang.cobol group... it's not the excitement about the tools, it's the disgust with the mismanagement by the developers of a platform that depends on it's users for survival.

Victor Panlilio · 7 months ago

USENET probably cost more in real dollars to implement than whatever amount VCs have poured into Twitter. If people were not happy with USENET, they could simply use another medium to publish their content; however, alternatives such as BBSes, the WELL, and walled gardens like Prodigy, AOL, CompuServe, etc. did not have the appeal of no-holds-barred USENET. The developers and management at Twitter can choose to ignore the wishes of their users, and I am not in any way condoning this callous indifference, but absent subscription fees, I still fail to see an implicit social contract even if the invisible hand of the market will eventually take care of things.

Lucretia (GeekMommy) Pruitt · 7 months ago

You know what? You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USENET

What you did was post something ridiculous and when called on it logically? Tried to negate what I said by trying to trump it with "old school geek cred" - but you didn't bother to take 30 seconds to see if you actually were dealing with someone who was equally or moreso an "Internet geezer" than yourself before posting it.
Turns out you were incorrect.

You attempted to dismiss legitimate complaints of a userbase that is the reason that Twitter has any funding at all as "whining" and tried to meet logical counter arguments with a "well back in my day" dismissal. Unfortunately for you? Neither worked.

At some point? Learn to admit when you've made a mistake. It will serve you in much better stead than continuing to dig a hole for yourself.

Victor Panlilio · 7 months ago

@GeekMommy, I suggest you lose the attitude. USENET was built on top of network infrastructure that cost real money to build out, regardless of how the server code was developed. I've worked on projects that represented billions of dollars of investment over many years, and today I work for one of the largest engineering firms in the world - we design and build systems that generate power and purify water for millions of people. Fail Whale does not begin to compare with no electricity and no water. Duh.

Lucretia (GeekMommy) Pruitt · 7 months ago

Suggest all you like - it's your own attitude that is meritless.

Dude. Take 2 minutes. Try clicking a link or two. Quit trying to school me in things I actually know considerably more about than you do.
You've seen the databases - I've written them.
You talk about infrastructure - I've certified (or decertified it).
You work as a webmaster for a diocese - I coded for nearly 2 years for the Archdiocese and did all of their Y2K remediation on COBOL backends that ran their entire financial, charitable and cemetary systems and then mapped that to visual front ends for Windows from HP mainframes.
You talk about mission critical systems - I know the guys who have the ability to bring them down and go to DEFCON every year.
It takes about 2 seconds to find out that I used to be a CIS professor who taught coding, logic, and business systems and that I've done high-end, speciailized Source Code review on every major electronic voting system out there and know more about their processes than 99.99% of the folks out there... but you're trying to lecture me on this?

Good change management remains good change management - the fact that no one at Twitter is remotely familiar with how to implement it doesn't disappear because there are other issues in the world. It's a logical fallacy that I'm not about to fall for.

Then again, you have managed to waste considerable amounts of my time with this frivolous and nonsensical path of yours... so in a most basic, trollish way, you win. The Interwebs are yours...

Fortunately? My own usenet experiences gave me the fortitude long ago to walk away from a thread when I realized that the person on the other end of it is all bluster and no substance.

Have a nice time worrying about whether or not the hackers are coming to get you. Oh, and when you're done? Consider dropping by to enter the contest to win an Ethical Hacking certification course on my site - it seems you might enjoy the enlightenment that the EC program could bring you.

Victor Panlilio · 7 months ago

The deadliest of the seven sins is Pride. I'll leave it to the readers to decide which one of us is manifesting it more clearly.

Victor Panlilio · 7 months ago

"good change management doesn't consist of informing the user base after the fact of a change you have already implemented that impacts their usage & functionality, then waiting to see if it is accepted and having to "fix" whatever you've broken after the fact."

Happens in large corporations all the time. Not saying it's right, but that's just the way things are. I've seen enough database code in large systems to know that much of the infrastructure running our civilization is held together with spit, or worse. Frankly, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it all came crashing to a halt. The Fail Whale is the least of our worries. The energy grid is a much more mission-critical system, and if the systems used to manage it have anywhere near as much cruft in them as I suspect, we could be in for a very rude awakening unless we decentralize and diversify our power generation, and soon.

Lucretia Pruitt · 7 months ago

Dude. Take 2 minutes. Try clicking a link or two. Quit trying to school me in things I actually know considerably more about than you do.
You've seen the databases - I've written them.
You talk about infrastructure - I've certified (or decertified it).
You work as a webmaster for a diocese - I coded for nearly 2 years for the Archdiocese and did all of their Y2K remediation on COBOL backends that ran their entire financial, charitable and cemetary systems and then mapped that to visual front ends for Windows from HP mainframes.
You talk about mission critical systems - I know the guys who have the ability to bring them down and go to DEFCON every year.
It takes about 2 seconds to find out that I used to be a CIS professor who taught coding, logic, and business systems and that I've done high-end, speciailized Source Code review on every major electronic voting system out there and know more about their processes than 99.99% of the folks out there... but you're trying to lecture me on this?

Good change management remains good change management - the fact that no one at Twitter is remotely familiar with how to implement it doesn't disappear because there are other issues in the world. It's a logical fallacy that I'm not about to fall for.

Then again, you have managed to waste considerable amounts of my time with this frivolous and nonsensical path of yours... so in a most basic, trollish way, you win. The Interwebs are yours...

Fortunately? My own usenet experiences gave me the fortitude long ago to walk away from a thread when I realized that the person on the other end of it is all bluster and no substance.

Have a nice time worrying about whether or not the hackers are coming to get you. Oh, and when you're done? Consider dropping by to enter the contest to win an Ethical Hacking certification course on my site - it seems you might enjoy the enlightenment that the EC program could bring you.

Victor Panlilio · 7 months ago

1. Twitter Fail Whale.
2. The sewer backs up into your basement just as the power fails.

Which one do you think most people would be more upset about?

There, I dismantled your precious house of cards. Get some sleep. Your child needs you more than you need to impress people with your intelligence (and arrogance).

Victor Panlilio · 7 months ago

@GeekMommy wrote: "you have managed to waste considerable amounts of my time with this frivolous and nonsensical path of yours"

Uh, no. It was YOUR choice to respond at length. Don't blame me for YOUR choice. You talk about logical fallacies, well there's a huge one right there. :-D

Read Covey's 90/10 principle. Here, I'll even give you a link:

http://www.irastimes.org/The_90-10_Principle.htm

You're welcome, and I forgive you for your intemperate outburst. :-)

Lucretia (GeekMommy) Pruitt · 7 months ago

Well said as usual Louis... now, can someone get figure out a way to get them to believe it?

Victor Panlilio · 7 months ago

How to get Twitter management to believe it? Leave Twitter -- in droves.

Daniel Tunkelang · 7 months ago

I'm with Victor here. Criticizing a free service for poor design decisions is everyone's right. The right to *make* the decisions, however, is another story. And users believing they have those rights over a service just because they've "built the value" by voluntarily using it with no contractual obligations beyond what they agree to in the terms of service? Sorry, but that's an odd sense of entitlement that is far too prevalent, at least in the echo chamber of the blogosphere / Twitterverse. Imagine if we applied that logic to every business model--you basically destroy the conventional understanding of ownership. Perhaps that's part of the 2.0 Manifesto, but it has little to do with reality.

Victor Panlilio · 7 months ago

Daniel - the sense of entitlement suggests that people have lost a sense of proportionality. Perhaps it is because their ego-gratification needs are somehow tied to their online celebrityhood, enabled by a medium like Twitter. On USENET, no one cared who you were, and the concept of "followers" was irrelevant. If people agreed with what you had to say, fine. If they didn't, fine. USENET brought out some of the best and worst behaviours in people but at least everyone understood that they did not have a right to complain about what a FREE service should or should not offer its users. Now, with social media, users act as though the world owes them a tailored platform from which to spew their intellectual arrogance. No, it doesn't, regardless of their professional accomplishments or academic qualifications. Say I put up a store and decide to offer FREE coffee every MWF to all the people who come in, whether they shop there or not. Then I -- the store management -- decide to change this to Tue-Thu, or Sat-Sun -- for whatever reason. Do the people who helped themselves to the free coffee have a right to tell me NOT to change the schedule of free coffee days because it's not as convenient for them? Do they have a right to dictate to me that I should only use fair-traded coffee? Do these same freeloaders have a right to insist "you owe it to us to keep things the same because our patronage of your store is what creates shareholder value, blah blah blah...", as the chattering classes of the social media universe tend to do? If I was the store management, I'd be tempted to tell them "Take your change management business somewhere else." Some customers are just not worth the hassle, especially the people who seem to think we ought to bow down to them because they have some kind of "following." Reality check: remember the golden rule -- those who have the gold make the rules. Unless we're the VCs putting up the money, we can't demand anything at all from our "investment" -- as if. A mob is still a mob, even when it uses social media to try to bend others to its wishes.

Sascha · 7 months ago

"The world of product development, on the backs of user content, is changing the way people expect to participate. And when they aren't treated as equals, or they are talked down to, people are taking it very seriously"

Spot on and thanks for the article!

Victor Panlilio · 7 months ago

@Louis: "this week's move seemed like they were once again telling us of a right way and a wrong way to use their product."

You mean, like Apple saying if I jailbreak my iPhone running 2.2.1 there's no guarantee it'll work with iPhone OS 3.0? Or Apple insisting that MacOS X should be run only on Apple hardware? ;-)

Oh, I forgot, Twitter is developed on Apple hardware. My bad. :-D