
Twitter Kills The #Dickbar - pitdesi
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/31/twitter-kills-the-dickbar/
======
yuvadam
Twitter is experiencing what I believe is a much larger issue with today's
platforms.

You _cannot_ attract a mass of users, give them a nice UX, build a community -
and then one day throw ads all over to place, call it a monetization strategy
and keep a straight face.

Twitter is going to have a _very_ hard time monetizing their platform, if the
#Dickbar is the best they came up with at this point. If I were them, I would
be afraid.

~~~
neilc
_You cannot attract a mass of users, give them a nice UX, build a community -
and then one day throw ads all over to place, call it a monetization strategy
and keep a straight face._

Really? Google did essentially that to great success, as has Facebook (perhaps
with less clear-cut success, but clearly not to the sort of outrage Twitter
received over the QuickBar).

~~~
phlux
There is a major difference in the service model between google search and
twitter tweets.

In search, you are actively seeking something out - you enter a phrase, it
returns a result. This meshes beautifully with ads - because in the ideal, an
ad matches what you're looking for, except it may want you to buy the end
result.

Tweets, totally different. With tweets - you are effectively either pushing
information to a specific group (your followers) or you are accepting pushed
information from those you follow.

This is much more intimate of a conversation as the tweets you're accepting by
following come from real people, or entities/groups that you
associate/identify with or are otherwise interested in their info; such as a
news stream.

To interject ads into this communication is much more akin to you standing at
the bus stop with your friend and you're talking about where to go for lunch
and being approached by some random stranger saying "Hey I think you guys
would really like Coke!"

You already KNOW what coke is, so this random person is not adding any value
to the conversation that you're having with your friend.

Between google and twitter, we are looking at the age old problem with content
relevance in push/pull context.

~~~
raganwald
Hitch hiking on your observation, perhaps Twitter should start by monetizing
search. When you search Twitter for tweets about the Japan Tsunami, maybe you
do want to see ads for charities or radiation pills? Maybe when you search for
Justin Bieber you are interested in concert tickets and music downloads?

~~~
jcampbell1
The types of searches you mentioned don't even monetize well on Google. The
reason Google search is a profit machine is because people search for stuff
like "lowest credit card rates", "refinance mortgage", "best shoes for my
wedding".

Searches for "Japan Tsunami" and "Justing Beiber" are not revenue generating
searches. Twitter's searches are only marginally monetizable.

~~~
Natsu
> Searches for "Japan Tsunami" and "Justing Beiber" are not revenue generating
> searches.

The first one probably isn't, but it's not too hard to imagine monetizing the
second search. You might need automatic spelling correction, though.

------
catshirt
" _Business Insider reported that the Dickbar was a mistake in the first
place, having been developed by a junior product manager with no senior
oversight._ "

and it made its way into a release? huh?

~~~
mcantelon
That sounds highly doubtful to me.

~~~
koolaidavoider
Yeah, it's definitely classic scapegoating. The fact that it was mentioned
makes them seem a bit petty...

~~~
ceejayoz
That and the "lots of people used it! really!"

I suspect the "junior product manager"'s name is Richard Bahr.

------
muppetman
Good on them for admitting wrong on this and backing down. Blindly forging
ahead when it was universally hated was never going to do them any favours.
Many a good blog post has been written about what they could do to make it
better, hopefully some of that feedback will find its way into whatever they
do next.

~~~
grandalf
True. I don't think anyone begrudges Twitter the ability to put ads into the
mobile app.

Why not just put trending items between "pages" when the user scrolls through
tweets, each one about the height of a tweet? (one per page so that it's not
too overwhelming)

~~~
jinushaun
That's how Tweetie originally worked on the Mac and everyone was fine with it.
The Dickbar was a bad idea because it laid on top of everything.

------
dr_
I'm a little surprised that they removed the revised version of the bar. I
found some of the topics listed there interesting. Seems like they responded
to the technorati rather than what would best serve their needs along with
their users. Facebook made changes all the time - and then people would start
organizing groups on facebook opposed to the changes. But eventually the users
adapted and all was forgotten.

I suppose one option is to move the bar to just the search area, where people
are willfully looking for particular types of information.

------
younata
So, I guess this means I can finally go update my twitter client.

~~~
wtn
Ha—not yet, it doesn't drop until later today!

~~~
younata
I just did an update, and I don't have the dickbar.

------
donnyg107
The real difference I see between google and twitter is space and focus.
Google had room on their clean results pages to place ads, and they also had
users that were used to skimming and overlooking a lot of the text on the page
anyway. Ads were not a huge problem for google. Twitter's app users don't have
the space on their feeds for a few square centimeters of ad space, especially
because we don't skim and skip over tweets (unless they look like the have
lots of @s and #s). Tweets are like prepackaged feelings already. Someone who
barely read tweets would have nothing left to intake. Twitter needs to find a
way to place ads without taking up space or annoying reading time. That, or
find a place on the page which doesn't LOOK like its taking up space. Meaning,
if the bottom cm is always an ad, it isn't dropping down into my tweets. I
just have a slightly smaller screen, which I will acclimate to quickly and
won't annoy me regularly. Also, the ads can be more expensive that way. Put
the ads on the screen all the time, not just some of the time, and they won't
impede upon my twitter space, they'll sit within twitter's ad space.

------
flipside
A painful but necessary decision for twitter, I know they need to monetize
their service but alienating users in a way that becomes a meme is the wrong
way to go.

I fully expect some version of #dickbar to be back someday once they've worked
out the technology for showing relevant updates, they just tried to implement
it before its time.

I guarantee you that by next year there will be a way to do this right.

------
r00k
This seems to be a great example of one of the challenges with iOS apps: you
can't do a limited roll-out of new features.

If Twitter could have deployed the bar to a hundred or so real users, I think
they would have quickly found that people mostly hated it.

I believe you're allowed to distribute test versions of your app to 6-ish
handsets for testing, but I'm sure this barely covers the internal folks at
Twitter. It'd be nice if they'd had the option to do some more thorough early
testing. (Whether they would have done so, or would have listened to the
results is outside my point).

~~~
mrkurt
It's _harder_ to do limited roll outs, but not impossible. It's feasible to
have all the code in place and only trigger it based on a server response, for
instance. That's basically how they handle the web app.

~~~
jonknee
How does that work with the App Store approval process? I could see that also
being a strategy to try and sneak stuff past Apple.

~~~
ianferrel
The same way that testing apps with Easter eggs works. You have to tell Apple
that the feature exists, and let them test it. If you don't, and they find out
after approval, you run the risk of getting your app pulled.

~~~
jrockway
Would Apple really pull the official Twitter app? It seems highly unlikely,
because Twitter has leverage over Apple's users. People won't switch to some
other short message sharing service, they'll switch to a non-Apple phone.

~~~
statictype
The iPhone was popular before the existing Twitter client existed. There are
also lots of good 3rd party Twitter clients for the iPhone.

 _People won't switch to some other short message sharing service, they'll
switch to a non-Apple phone._

Nah, they'll probably use the web UI or some other native client that supports
Twitter.

------
emullet
I felt if they had made it an optional item in the settings they would have
avoided the backlash, and they would still be generating money off of it. The
fact it was not optional, then they announced limited API access for
developers whipped everyone into a frenzy.

------
JCB_K
"The bar was also seen as a potential means of in-app notifications for new
@mentions, DMs, and other important activity."

Raise your hand if you believe this.

------
grantlmiller
so why isn't this headline: @Jack offed the #dickbar ?

------
blhack
Good. I hope I never, ever have to read the word "dickbar" ever again. That is
one of the most ridiculously stupid attempts at being "hip" I've ever seen.

"Dickbar"? What are we, 12 year old jersey-shore fans?

~~~
rhizome
For you, possibly. For everyone else, "dick" refers to Dick Costolo.

~~~
jrockway
Would it be called the "jrockbar" if I created it? Unlikely.

"dickbar" stuck because "dick" is a word with negative connotations that
refers to the male anatomy. The fact that it's the guy's name simply makes for
a cute cover story.

~~~
rhizome
I'm sure the entendre didn't escape the early proponents, you're right.

