Why Google buying Twitter would be a disaster (for one person)

So Google may (or may not) be buying Twitter.

Some will consider this as yet another seamless step in Google's attempt not to dominate the world, but merely to own it. Others will be fascinated to see whether, in Google's hands, Twitter would lose its cachet, becoming drool rather than cool.

And then there's Douglas Bowman.

He left Google just a couple of weeks ago, baring his frustration as he went, in a blog.

"I won't miss a design philosophy that lives or dies strictly by the sword of data," he wrote.

Right now, he appears to be the creative director of Twitter. He went there, presumably, to live or die by a slightly more tasteful and subjective saber. Now he may be faced with a return to those philosophies that seemed to have sucked the spit out of his soul.

You might think that Google would have exhibited some chastened emotions after his departure. You might think that the company would have considered whether their data-driven mania was, indeed, mania.

You might also think that grass is blue, the sky is black, and cow dung smells like the finest olive oil.

You see, last Sunday morning, I was bereft of Premier League soccer. And my television forced itself upon some local NBC channel, where there appeared a show called "Press Here."

"What am I doing? I'm changing your shade of blue to number 27."

(Credit: CC KeiyaC)

I am sure it is a fine show. Just not, for me, for a Sunday morning. Anyway, before I could even slap myself awake, there appeared Google person Marissa Mayer. She was explaining to a couple of chaps (I'm sorry, I didn't catch who they were) how data can prove anything. And everything.

Here is a sample from her sermon: "Every design starts with an instinct. It should look like this, or it should look like that. You can actually test it with data. The humbling thing about that is sometimes the data proves you wrong. So for every change I propose, you know, three out of four, four out of five, the data will support the change."

This was said with such astonishingly smug certainty that my butter croissant involuntarily twirled around my mouth before attempting to exit between my two front teeth.

This one short segment suggested why Douglas Bowman might have gone slightly loopy at the thought of 41 shades of blue being subjected to Google's infallible data test.

Of course, in moving to Twitter, Mr. Bowman may have negotiated such fine terms of employment that the only data that will matter to him, in the event of a sale to Google, would be the data remitted by his bank.

Still, can you imagine his first meeting post-sale when a know-all face looks upon him benignly and says, in a know-all voice: "That little blue birdy. The data just doesn't support it"?

[compbry15]

Meh. I guess it sucks in some respects, but not to too much of an extent.

Sure, it sucks that Doug posted his rant about Google thinking he would never have to see them again, but it isn't like he relies on Twitter for anything. Such a prominent designer such as him could have an easy time finding a new gig if Google did let him go out of spite when/if they buy Twitter. Just the mere fact that there are 1-2 stories a week about this guy shows that he wont have issues getting a new job. This is free publicity for him.

Regardless, Google and Doug may have conflicting ideals when it comes to design, but if I were Google I wouldn't take his rant as an insult. He wasn't insulting Google in the least. Their strategy obviously works for them, but wouldn't work for everyone. Doug has his own strategies as well which have been pretty successful during his career.

In the end I'm sure it will all work out.

[benjwah]

I'm sure Google knows how much creative types don't enjoy being dictated to by data. It's anathema to the creative process to do something because data supports it. Frankly, that's a reason to find an alternative. But Google would know all this. At the very least, the data would have shown them.

[ddhboy]

Well, it was kind of inevitable though. I mean how does twitter make money? They don't have ads and the bandwidth and servers must cost them a fortune.

[Harlan879]

This is so silly. Google is right. Creative people should come up with innovations that make them happy. Then statisticians can test whether the instincts of the creative people generalize to the population at large. If they do, great. If they don't, try another creative idea.

[Hunnter2k3]

Data led to The Rule of Thirds.
As in, splitting a page up into a 9x9 grid, and having the most "impacting" parts on those lines.

Data can drive design quite easily.
Designers who don't accept that are quite delusional. They like to think that there "is something else" to it.
There isn't, design (in this sense) works to influence the human mind. Data on viewers can aid this massively. (some prefer a particular color, some prefer font A over font B, etc)

[Maclover1]

Forget that guy, I wonder what they are going to pay for twitter? What is its worth? I guess Google see it as a place to put ads???

Twitter with out ads or some other way of making money is just a collection of digital verbal diarrhea, with millions of posts, 99% of which no one really cares about.

[lonestarState]

At the end of the day, who cares about this crap anyways... I mean this sounds like some obsession with some clown, we will never know. Think about it, we just read some bs about some dude. Just wasted brain cells reading this TMZ gossip.

[taphilo]

It sounds much more technical to say "data" than to say "statistics" on TV - but in Google's case it is the same thing - it seems to be that a statistical analysis has to support every decision since the whole "being" of Google was founded on statistics.
It worked, so why change something that can always be "proved" to work?
Tom Philo
http://www.taphilo.com

[Maarek Stele]

Next, all that google needs to buy is 2nd Life and they have their own METAVERSE.

Call me "Hero Protagonist"!

[russkeller]

I can think of one very basic reasoning that makes Google buying twitter a bad idea, it goes to the heart of a lot of the problems in the US. The whole philosophy of the last two decades of allowing companies to become so titanic in size they've become "too Big To Fail."