Twitter's @replies change suggests viable model

"The horror! The horror!" gasped Joseph Conrad's Kurtz as he lay dying in the Congo. Who knew he was a Twitter user?

After all, Kurtz's bleak pronouncement sounds suspiciously like the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth that accompany any changes that Twitter makes to its widely used service, most recently the decision to hide replies your friends send to their friends, unless you're following those same friends. Twitter suggests the change was made based on usage patterns, feedback, and the desire to hide otherwise "confusing" noise.

The furious response has been withering, as CNET's Caroline McCarthy details, both in its sanctimonious tone and in its unwitting irony.

TechRadar reports that Twitter users are revolting en masse, with #fixreplies and #twitterfail topping Twitter's trends section, indicating widespread use of the terms/hashtags. ZDNet's Jennifer Leggio demands of Twitter, "Do you understand the value of your own service?" while the Inquisitr calls the policy change Twitter's "dumbest move yet."

Not to be outdone, TechCrunch's Jason Kincaid bemoans the "dumbing down" of Twitter, and ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick stops wringing his hands long enough to gasp, Kurtz-style, "This isn't a small change at all, it's big and it's bad."

The horror! The horror!

For those who will chime in to voice their serious displeasure that Twitter had the gall to change a service for which these users have paid a whopping $0.00, I have two words:

Pay up.

That's right: pay money so that you actually have the right to voice your displeasure as a customer rather than as a user. Customers have a right to complain about changes of service. It's unclear to me why anyone else would.

This, perhaps, is a budding business plan for Twitter: use a free service as a grand experiment, constantly evolving and changing at Twitter's whim, with a paid service that keeps things constant for customers, and perhaps adds additional functionality or quality of service guarantees for these same customers.

It's a model that has worked very well in the open-source world for Red Hat, Zimbra, and others. Why not extend the model to Twitter, which has struggled to find a serious business model, and thereby convert a significant percentage of the whining masses of Twitter users into paying customers?

UPDATE @ 8:17 PT: Some on Twitter have complained that they would pay for Twitter if given the option. Fair point. But this suggests that Twitter doesn't really have a business model problem. It simply needs to charge people. Having said this, I know from experience in open source that the stated desire to pay is often much weaker than the reality of people actually paying. Only one way to find out....

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay. Just don't whine if the service goes down or changes. You haven't bought the right to do that.

[shvmoz]

I would absolutely pay money to get customized twitter behaviour, but your "two words" sort of skip over the fact that I can't. If you think that it's a viable business model, which it might well be, then it probably needs to be offered before it can be seen as a legitimate alternative to complaining. In the interim, what Twitter has is brand equity and a sense of inevitability as the microblogging/web-SMS/message-bus/whatever service of destiny, neither of which are helped by making such disruptive changes and opening up well-understood competitive niches for others to pry into.

The optics of changing (degrading?) behaviour and charging to get the old behaviour back are somewhat questionable too -- I would expect a much more widespread backlash from that, to be honest.

[chapelwireless]

"Here! Here! robble robble robble" <smacks floor with cane in unbridled approval>

[OyezOyez]

I agree completely.

Help unify the backlash on my #fixreplies #twitterfail petion here:
http://bit.ly/fixtwitter

Let's make sure they get the message crystal clear that what their core users want matters, bigtime.

[mglickman]

I'm sorry, am I using the gratis version of twitter? Did I opt out of paying for my premium twitter account?

I agree that twitter doesn't necessarily have the same responsibility towards its user as a service provider does to its (paying) customers, but that's no reason to marginalize the user base.

[bradweikel]

I have to agree with shvmoz. Your argument doesn't make much sense unless Twitter actually offers a premium account option. Reprimanding users for "whining" overlooks the obvious fact that "whining" is the only transaction available to Twitter users, other than leaving the service altogether. You either vote with your tweets or you vote with your feet - there is no vote with your wallet option yet.

Further, I think we've entered an era where "put up or shut up" should apply to services, not users. Despite all its awesomeness, Twitter doesn't actually offer anything that can't be replicated fairly easily, other than the network effects of its huge user base. I don't think users will really pay for that, knowing that momentum could shift to a new service at any time.

[terminalblue]

i think its funny for someone that get payed for people to read his opinion in a published format to tell people to pay for free publishing.

[jchanski21]

Last I checked, social sites such as Twitter rely on *users* for content. Even though these sites don't collect checks from the users, the users are directly responsible for the checks they get from advertisers and the like. So let the users complain all they want - they're the reason the site exists in the first place.

[Steffest]

a bit short sighted, no?
What's the the only valuable property of twitter?
It's the userbase
We do pay twitter: we pay it with our time, our status updates, our loyalty to some extend.
a service that thrives that much on its userbase should better listen to it, or - as bradweikel states - the momentum could shift to a new service at any time.

[Ungod]

The fact that I can't complain about something since it's free is total crap. That's saying my voice doesn't matter unless there is $$ behind it. I found that statement to drop my jaw from someone who is supposedly involved in the open source movement. Is not the heart of the open source ethos freedom? The beauty of having users using a free service is that you aren't bound by the cash that would normally influence the product. Twitter isn't the only name in the microblog game and if they take the attitude of "sit down and shut up" it will tank them. Hopefully Twitter wont take the path that so many free products I had enjoyed in the past and that is turn a buck at the expense of the user experience. I would have no problem with conservative ad posts placed on my twitter page but don't charge me to use the service that was once free.

Wait maybe I shouldn't have posted this since I didn't pay CNET to use their service.

[UrmiRaj]

wait so this "change for the betterment of (newer) users is twitter's way of saying 'so-long ye freeloaders, time to pay up'?? did I miss the twitter memo (twemo?) that states this intention? if the folks behind the big blue bird (or in this case, failwhale) want paying customers, they shouldn't shoo away those who have been there/are there upholding its brand right now.

what's the fun of twitter if we can't "listen in" on others' conversations...if we are so overwhelmed with information (or want our privacy) then leave twitter - or better yet, become an internet hermit and stop adding to the clogged tubes!

and on another note, if twitter users against this change actually voted with their feet (bradweikel's word :)) then there wud be much more destruction than with hashtags!

[JenniferLeggio]

Matt,

I think you miss the point. Also, there are gladly people who would pay for premium Twitter services, feature integration, business accounts, etc. But that's currently not an option. Do you propose people send money blindly to the Twitter offices?

The issue is that this type of action on Twitter's behalf will hurt customer loyalty and the way businesses use Twitter in the long run -- which could eventually hurt the company's valuation. What is baffling to me is that it was an option before. So why take away the option? With all of the challenges that lay in front of Twitter, taking away something that many people used appears to be shortsighted.

Ev did say yesterday after all of hubbub that perhaps they should find another solution. So they are listening to their users, which is smart. I just wonder which users they were listening to in the first place.

What's also interesting to me is how many people didn't know about this option in the first place. Maybe had Twitter done a better job of making that known (do they even have marketing? not sure) they wouldn't have had to go through the trouble of removing a checkbox from the interface.

Jennifer

[jilliancyork]

See, I would pay up. That hasn't yet been presented to me as an option - thus, your argument is pretty ridiculous.

[jeffromiller]

I don't use twitter...while I can see some of the benefit in it, I'm just not on the bandwagon yet. What I want to respond to is your condescending post to the millions of people that do use twitter. Using the term "whining" in response to folks who are unhappy with a product and then trying to make a distinction between a "user" and a "customer" like we all should know this as second nature is probably not in your best interest as someone who is employed by and is an advisor to open-source companies. I know that if I worked at one of the companies you were advising I would certainly take note of your surprisingly not-so-well-thought-out post. Paying customers have a "right" to complain, but a non-paying "user" does not - that is "whining", huh? Nice approach.

[Jon_Aston]

Um, sorry, but twitter is (and has) NOTHING without its loyal users. We create the bulk of twitter's value, regardless of whatever business model they may or may not implement. Ignoring that is bad for their relationship with us...and, therefore, bad for business.

[thegirlriot]

i dislike this distinction you make between user and customer--not only because there is not yet the option to become a 'customer,' but also because of the nature of 'use.' who is using whom? we may use the twitter service, yet it is we users who are providing the socioeconomic data necessary (free of cost) that has enabled the service to make such a cultural splash, change the face of search, and heavily impact second party buying and selling methods. as a service that could not thrive without its users, it is a bit arrogant to think that the users have no right to voice opinions about service changes. not all currency is monetary, especially in this age of datamining. consider a broader definition of the term customer, or user, or both.

[ianfabfive]

I beg to differ. I do have the right to complain, it's only that since I didn't pay, Twitter also has a right to ignore me. Otherwise why do you have a comments section here?

[darfjono]

jeez enough with the twitter new posts. it's not even NEWS.

[beccalee1975]

I have to disagree with the idea that users need to pay in order to earn the right to complain. We are the customers even if we don't pay for the service, since without users the twitter service loses its value. It is the extensive community that creates value for both the user and the twitter brand.

[jusben1369]

I'm actually with Matt on this. I notice there's a distinct subset of very literal people here who think they've debunked the argument by pointing out you can't pay to use Twitter. I'm guessing Matt knew that already when he wrote the article so maybe he had a broader point in mind?

Twister charges you nothing. It's losing money hand over fist meaning that it's supplying more value than it's receiving. There is no barrier to switching to a new service. You don't have a leg to stand on to complain really. No, whether this pertains to a new business model opportunity - the second element to the argument - I'm not so sure. I think LinkedIn has the critical mass, value and right demographic to try it first.

[bradweikel]

I don't think the "very literal people" (I'm assuming you include me among them, based on my first comment) are well aware that the broader issue here, and the one Matt's headline suggests, is the question of how Twitter can successfully monetize its service. However, Matt's article got away from him when he wholly dismissed everybody's complaints and offered two suggestions: "don't whine" and "pay up." An inflammatory blog post with minimal substance is likely to get some critical comments.

jusben1369, you say we "don't have a leg to stand on to complain," but there is also zero basis for telling us NOT to complain, other than the same free speech we are exercising. Yes, we can bail on Twitter whenever we want, but for the time being we'd like to stay on board while voicing our objections to this change. Moreover, Twitter wants us to complain when we don't like things - that's how they improve their service, and they'd much rather have complaints than have users bolt to other services.

[bradweikel]

oops. strike "don't" from the first sentence of my previous comment.

[IgnatiusTheKing]

I think Twitter will die a swift and horrible death if they move to a subscription model.

[jrepenning]

The fact that we do not pay for Twitter legitimately means that we have no real say in what it does, fair enough.

But it has nothing to do with whether this reply-breakage makes sense.

There are several ways to assess whether the change makes sense.

From the perspective of "giving people what they" want, it makes no sense: the new behavior has always been available, and in fact has always been the default. No new service or mode is introduced. But one is taken away. There's a survey on Survey Monkey now, exploring how widely the now-unavailable service was in use, but the Twitter people know this absolutely, from their database (or maybe, they did until Tuesday morning, when the dropped that column from the tables, what a shame if they've tossed the very evidence needed to assess the move). But it doesn't really matter. I'm perfectly ready to believe that most users were using the default setting (that's how defaults work, after all). But those who took the option to build their communities, until it was taken away, are unsurprisingly unhappy.

From the perspective of Twitter's "business model," ... well, they haven't settled on one, yet, or at least haven't made that choice public, so it's hard to comment here. But one possible business model would be "selling ads," and that depends on "drawing eyes," and that depends on "being interesting." Twitter used to be fascinating; but they've killed that (a point I expand at http://snurl.com/hy7gf ). Another potential business model might be selling the software to other companies who want to incorporate this social feature into some larger product. Again, the utility depends on the uniqueness, and frankly, self-selected chat has been with us for ages, Twitter has nothing new to offer, there.

In one way, I can imagine this change making a sort of sense: it's certain to reduce the traffic. It reduces it immediately, because of all the tweets that are no longer being sent to people who wanted to see them. It reduces growth, because people can no longer discover interesting other people. It will probably reduce membership in absolute terms, since Twitter is now a dead, boring thing, representative of half a hundred other dead, boring, identical chat sites. So, if strangling traffic until the whole service dies is the goal, then yeah, this really works.

[epross]

As far as I can see Twitter is a huge waste of time.