Official Tweetstorm Feature Will Destroy Twitter Again
Twitter is reportedly testing a feature in its Android app that will automatically reformat large blocks of text into long self-reply threads or tweets. This will destroy Twitter, which has already been destroyed several times due to new features.
Previous Twitter-disruptive features include GIPHY integration, which encourages mediocre GIF responses that turn viral tweet responses into a wall of identical celebrity animations. The increased reply limit allows users to drag and drop a dozen strangers into unwanted public conversation; group DMs allow spammers to suck a dozen strangers into unwanted private correspondence. The tweet quote turns the timeline into a wall of “look at this stranger’s bad tweet.” The algorithmic timeline makes the conversation about live events (Twitter’s killer app) incoherent; Hashtags try to fix this, but instead force normal writers to write like robots in the hopes of getting their hundredth followers.
The moments tab is condescending; the message function is underestimated and easily overused, as is the ban; notifications contain useless information, such as “someone liked your answer.” Likes were better as favorites. The number of reactions to real-time updates is distracting; lists are awkward; Self-replies means that tweets move along your timeline as you try to read them; multiplayer streams are impossible to analyze right now, so everyone thinks they are being insulted by their own team. Confirmation has functional benefits and status, but it is nonetheless passed on to the Nazis when not banned.
Matt Navarra, director of social media at The Next Web, credits screenshots of this new feature, which could potentially disrupt Twitter, to someone named “Devesh Logendran,” to whom he also credits snapshots of several alleged upcoming Facebook features . Twitter declined to comment on the alleged feature. But such a feature might well be inappropriate for a service that constantly invents how to destroy itself.
While I do not mind and even encourage tweetstorming, there are certain strategies and certain difficulties for this. How someone approaches these challenges provides crucial context for the value of a tweetstorm. For example, the President of the United States rarely manages to post his own tweets.
There are plenty of contextual hints. Does the user know how many tweets they will send? Does the hundredth tweet deliver on the promise of the first, or is the thread spilling out, like over-noticed political consultant Eric Garland , into a rambling mess? Is the author composing each tweet as a separate unit suitable for retweetting, or do they break off mid-sentence, arguing that they should have voiced their tirade on Medium instead, but chose Twitter because they desperately need every suggestion they liked?
According to the model shown in the TNW screenshots, these signifiers will disappear. Twitter, according to TNW, automatically splits a block of text into multiple tweets and then attaches a clean score in brackets to each. The storm was approaching and dumping all of its contents, just a long essay, poorly tweeted, drawing attention to how bizarre and silly a tweet-storm can be, while erasing organic markers of the writer’s insane approach.
Of course, users will always have the choice to tweet the old fashioned way. The real danger lies in the kind of new horror users can achieve with this feature. Most of the existing features have messed up Twitter just because of their unintended consequences. What can spammers, hoaxers and Nazis achieve with this new tool? Probably more than well-mannered users who just need a good place to post one sentence at a time. (1/520)