Twitter is experiencing serious growing pains as of late, with the twitter stock dropping below $20 today, for the first time ever. New ideas announced, such as the future limit of 10,000 chars instead of 140, aren't helping either. 10,000 chars is more than most editorials, is twitter trying to be a tumblr? It became the webs commenting system to all news & stories, now it wants to be the publication system of all news and stories. I've said it before; "Content is no longer king, the platform on which it is delivered is", and Twitter wants to be a bigger platform to solve their stock pricing problem. Twitter has long had issues with abuse, and they made it clear several times they really don't know how to handle it. There's pornography & dominatrix services accounts, ISIS accounts, trolls, random shitposters, and people of all political persuasions on twitter, yet only the latter seem to get kicked off the service and banned forever. Twitter admits ’We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls.’, so the new abuse policy is since they can't stop it, they'll hide it: Just push it under the rug. This strategy was seen immediately in most peoples feeds. Conversations died out, and some really active people seem to have vanished (I barely see @adweek on twitter anymore and I used to see them all the time). Do you notice that Twitter acts a bit like Facebook now, where you don't see everything your friends are saying, even when they are speaking directly to you? Where posts from hours ago are appearing at the top of your feed, as if they are new? Jack Dorsey has begun experimenting with a timeline view in which tweets are sorted by relevance - as determined by an algorithm which can only be as smart as the person who programmed it - rather than chronological time published. Adding to that he launched an "while you were away" feature, that I've had to say "no thanks" to approx. a 100 times already. Jack Dorsey believes in this and "Moments" so much he's pushing it in the GUI of twitter, moving the buttons around hoping that one day we'll click it by accident.
"You will see us continue to question our reverse chronological timeline, and all the work it takes to build one by finding and following accounts ... We continue to show a questioning of our fundamentals in order to make the product easier and more accessible to more people.”
Now that I proved the MSM will fall for anything you can all follow me on my other acct. @SaintNegro29
Then there's the issue of Twitter Verified. At first, Twitter verified celebrities, which made a lot of sense as fans wanted to know they were following the real Kim Kardashian, Madonna or Rihanna and not a Madonna-imposter. The Mega-celebs were usually verified even before they logged on to twitter, and with this Twitter lured more fans to sign up so that they may celebrity-stalk Justin Bieber or every guy in One Direction. Twitter made it clear that a "Verified" checkmark was to ensure we knew that the person being X account was actually that person, regardless if it actually was their PR handler doing all the tweeting. Soon lots of friends of people who work at twitter were also verified, in a seemingly arbitrary game of knowing the right person. Journalists were verified, even those who had but one byline to their name, as long as they worked for the right publication, such as Buzzfeed, Vox, Huffpo, The Guardian, Wired, Bloomberg, and so on.
People who had problems with twitter accounts impersonating them could get verified - and many did in the early days of twitter, but not everyone who was having issues with twitter impersonators were granted the blue checkmark. Most of Adweek's writers have the verified checkmark, but not everyone at Adweek got it, so once again the checkmark seems arbitrary. Twitter says that Verification is currently used to establish authenticity of identities of key individuals and brands on Twitter, but our brand adland hasn't been verified. Pumpkin Spice Latte is verified but Hotel.com Captain Obvious isn't. To get verified you need to be chosen by a mystery someone at Twitter, or you could drop $15000 on advertising and secure your blue checkmark that way. Twitter says: "We concentrate on highly sought users in music, acting, fashion, government, politics, religion, journalism, media, sports, business and other key interest areas." as candidates for verification, so an obscure musician or media personality might be verified while a globally famous band is not. Logical, it isn't. As it turns out, Twitter can also remove your verification. So the blue checkmark no longer means "this is the person/ brand it claims to be", it now means "this is someone whom Twitter approves of". I simply can not interpret this removal of a verified check-mark in any other way. In the Twitter Rules they refer to "hateful conduct" as a no-no, which leaves me once again completely baffled as to why there are thousands of ISIS twitter accounts still working. Anonymous claimed to have taken down 20,000 ISIS accounts by reporting them to twitter, one wonders how so many accounts existed in the first place if "hateful conduct" is not allowed on the platform. Naturally since the "verified" checkmark was once used to separate the real person from any impersonators, there are now masses of Milo Yiannopoulos accounts popping up on twitter right now, as people change their name and avatar in a digital "I am Spartacus" moment, and #JeSuisMilo will probably trend soon.
Twitter has long had issues with abuse, and they made it clear several times they really don't know how to handle it. There's pornography & dominatrix services accounts, ISIS accounts, trolls, random shitposters, and people of all political persuasions on twitter, yet only the latter seem to get kicked off the service and banned forever. Twitter admits ’We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls.’, so the new abuse policy is since they can't stop it, they'll hide it: Just push it under the rug. This strategy was seen immediately in most peoples feeds. Conversations died out, and some really active people seem to have vanished (I barely see @adweek on twitter anymore and I used to see them all the time). Do you notice that Twitter acts a bit like Facebook now, where you don't see everything your friends are saying, even when they are speaking directly to you? Where posts from hours ago are appearing at the top of your feed, as if they are new? Jack Dorsey has begun experimenting with a timeline view in which tweets are sorted by relevance - as determined by an algorithm which can only be as smart as the person who programmed it - rather than chronological time published. Adding to that he launched an "while you were away" feature, that I've had to say "no thanks" to approx. a 100 times already. Jack Dorsey believes in this and "Moments" so much he's pushing it in the GUI of twitter, moving the buttons around hoping that one day we'll click it by accident.
"You will see us continue to question our reverse chronological timeline, and all the work it takes to build one by finding and following accounts ... We continue to show a questioning of our fundamentals in order to make the product easier and more accessible to more people.”
, as "Marie Christmas" proved when s/he managed to troll CNN and the AP. His/Her quote ended up as "Marie A. Parker" in an AP telegram that was published by the New York Times, and it was clearly a troll mocking the journalists, as s/he threw in a clear reference to Gamergate. AP archive
"... When she asked what he was doing, he replied, "for necessary ethics," according to Parker. The woman said he had a strange emblem on his shirt with the letters GG on it. He didn't harm her, just asked her to stay quiet, Parker said."
, all without the writers realizing they had fallen for a troll account.
Now that I proved the MSM will fall for anything you can all follow me on my other acct. @SaintNegro29
Then there's the issue of Twitter Verified. At first, Twitter verified celebrities, which made a lot of sense as fans wanted to know they were following the real Kim Kardashian, Madonna or Rihanna and not a Madonna-imposter. The Mega-celebs were usually verified even before they logged on to twitter, and with this Twitter lured more fans to sign up so that they may celebrity-stalk Justin Bieber or every guy in One Direction. Twitter made it clear that a "Verified" checkmark was to ensure we knew that the person being X account was actually that person, regardless if it actually was their PR handler doing all the tweeting. Soon lots of friends of people who work at twitter were also verified, in a seemingly arbitrary game of knowing the right person. Journalists were verified, even those who had but one byline to their name, as long as they worked for the right publication, such as Buzzfeed, Vox, Huffpo, The Guardian, Wired, Bloomberg, and so on.
People who had problems with twitter accounts impersonating them could get verified - and many did in the early days of twitter, but not everyone who was having issues with twitter impersonators were granted the blue checkmark. Most of Adweek's writers have the verified checkmark, but not everyone at Adweek got it, so once again the checkmark seems arbitrary. Twitter says that Verification is currently used to establish authenticity of identities of key individuals and brands on Twitter, but our brand adland hasn't been verified. Pumpkin Spice Latte is verified but Hotel.com Captain Obvious isn't. To get verified you need to be chosen by a mystery someone at Twitter, or you could drop $15000 on advertising and secure your blue checkmark that way. Twitter says: "We concentrate on highly sought users in music, acting, fashion, government, politics, religion, journalism, media, sports, business and other key interest areas." as candidates for verification, so an obscure musician or media personality might be verified while a globally famous band is not. Logical, it isn't. As it turns out, Twitter can also remove your verification. So the blue checkmark no longer means "this is the person/ brand it claims to be", it now means "this is someone whom Twitter approves of". I simply can not interpret this removal of a verified check-mark in any other way. In the Twitter Rules they refer to "hateful conduct" as a no-no, which leaves me once again completely baffled as to why there are thousands of ISIS twitter accounts still working. Anonymous claimed to have taken down 20,000 ISIS accounts by reporting them to twitter, one wonders how so many accounts existed in the first place if "hateful conduct" is not allowed on the platform. Naturally since the "verified" checkmark was once used to separate the real person from any impersonators, there are now masses of Milo Yiannopoulos accounts popping up on twitter right now, as people change their name and avatar in a digital "I am Spartacus" moment, and #JeSuisMilo will probably trend soon.
