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Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive

marco.org

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Re: Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive

#31

Post by Duff »

DanI-S wrote: post #16

I'd be interested to hear what 'normal', non-power users of Twitter think. The 'mouth-breathing buffoons' that Jeff Rock so denigrates (and evidently make up most of Twitter's users) may actually like this UI feature. Viewing the world through nerd-tinted spectacles makes many things seem horrible that are perfectly OK to a regular person.

It shouldn't matter.

In 2011, people interested in NCAA basketball should see sports stuff. People interested in Ruby on Rails or Amazon EC2 should see IT stuff. It should be pretty easy to spot people's interests on Twitter.

Amazon.com doesn't recommend women's clothing to me. Netflix doesn't show me Spanish language movies.

Re: Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive

#32

Post by danilocampos »

Marco nails it.

The whole value proposition of Twitter, historically, has been that you can make it whatever you would like it to be. Are you Captain Nerd? Load up that stream with the finest of curated nerds and be soaked in their wisdom, go! Are you nuts about celebrity culture? Sports? Food? Just want to keep up with your friends and colleagues? You're covered.

The Dickbar is a violation of that understanding that needlessly undermines Twitter's brand and utility among the fiercest of its loyalists. There are many better ways to monetize the experience here. AdWords-style keyword based stuff being the most obvious, and most likely to be virtuous. Pitch me awesome iDevice accessories and apps all day long – I bet I'd actually care about them. Design sites? I'll check it out! Magic kitchen tools? Where?! Awesome restaurants near me? I will eat there!

Sports? Celebrities? Hell. No.

This is crass and it's a fuck up, plain and simple. Five years from now we'll look back and one of two things will be on our minds:

"Wow, glad Twitter rethought that garbage and built something that truly worked for both users and advertisers. What a powerhouse they are."

"Twitter? Was that like Friendster or something? I think I remember it."

Re: Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive

#33

Post by Skroob »

Duff wrote: post #31
DanI-S wrote: post #16

I'd be interested to hear what 'normal', non-power users of Twitter think. The 'mouth-breathing buffoons' that Jeff Rock so denigrates (and evidently make up most of Twitter's users) may actually like this UI feature. Viewing the world through nerd-tinted spectacles makes many things seem horrible that are perfectly OK to a regular person.

It shouldn't matter. In 2011, people interested in NCAA basketball should see sports stuff. People interested in Ruby on Rails or Amazon EC2 should see IT stuff. It should be pretty easy to spot people's interests on Twitter. Amazon.com doesn't recommend women's clothing to me. Netflix doesn't show me Spanish language movies.

This is an interesting idea that I haven't seen before. Why shouldn't Twitter target trends at me? They know my tweets, and tweets of the people I follow. They could target trends, and ads for that matter, that I'd actually like to see.

Re: Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive

#34

Post by icarus_drowning »

What I find interesting about this analysis is the fact that Twitter could presumably "fix" the dickbar by finding a way to make it 1)useful and 2) targeted to the user.

After years of Twitter claiming that they were going to find a way to monetize without resorting to irritating advertisements (and after billions of tweets) they presumably have the knowledge and ability to do this. The question really is, "do they want to"?

Re: Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive

#35

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Re: Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive

#37

Post by zecho »

Skroob wrote: post #33
Duff wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't matter. In 2011, people interested in NCAA basketball should see sports stuff. People interested in Ruby on Rails or Amazon EC2 should see IT stuff. It should be pretty easy to spot people's interests on Twitter. Amazon.com doesn't recommend women's clothing to me. Netflix doesn't show me Spanish language movies.

This is an interesting idea that I haven't seen before. Why shouldn't Twitter target trends at me? They know my tweets, and tweets of the people I follow. They could target trends, and ads for that matter, that I'd actually like to see.

Maybe they don't want to get into the targeted advertising market and see themselves more as general advertising? That said, you still don't see ads for women's lingerie during the World Series and you don't see many beer ads during Dancing with the Stars. There's a balance and I don't think twitter has it figured out yet.

Re: Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive

#38

Post by mechanical_fish »

daveman692 wrote: post #14

Am I mean for just not caring what's currently trending on Twitter? Feels like a similar problem to showing ads on blogs. I'm there for the content and the ad has to be exceptionally good in order to get any of my attention.

Because I am an engineer and I battle distractions all day, I have always thought of hashtags as Twitter's dumbest feature. Back when Twitter was new it took me weeks to understand just why people were complaining about spammers. How could you be spammed on Twitter? I asked myself. Shouldn't you just unfollow the spammer and get on with your life?

But since then I have had the occasion to witness marketers using Twitter. And I have learned that, to a marketer, hashtags are pure heroin. You get to eavesdrop on strangers discussing products. You can count references to your product, and to your competitors' products. So what if this activity bears the same relationship to actually getting out of the building that playing Rock Band does to a real blues jam? It's a rush, and it comes in optimal tiny doses like Snackwell cookies, and it almost feels like productive work. From what I can tell a majority of the marketers in the world have Tweetdeck open all the time and wince reflexively every time anybody on Twitter says anything bad about their pet trademarks. To ask them to do otherwise is like asking a novelist to stop compulsively reloading their Amazon sales rank over and over.

Re: Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive

#39

Post by daimyoyo »

I deleted the twitter app from my phone as soon as I realized the dickbar was something I couldn't opt out of. Now I use hootsuite. Deceit UI, multiple accounts, and I can post across accounts and(something twitter doesn't do) schedule tweets to post at a later time. Twitter had made a serious miscalculation with the dickbar. They've reminded users there are other clients out there they can use. And if twitter decides to shut off API access for those clients, a LARGE percentage of people will simply stop using the service. I will.

Re: Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive

#40

Post by jmspring »

I think part of the thing missing here with regard to the "dickbar" is "context". The short time I used the official Twitter client before changing to another one was that the "dickbar" had no relation to what I was actually interested in.

The UI was intrusive, yes, but what was presented was more offensive. Fix/soften the UI impact and make the "trending" topic more appropriate and things would be less offensive.

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