Dorsey recalled that when the team was first building the service, it decided to make follower count “big and bold,” which naturally made people focus on it.
“Was that the right decision at the time? Probably not,” he said. “If I had to start the service again, I would not emphasize the follower count as much … I don’t think I would create ‘likes’ in the first place.”
If you put something in front of people that looks like a score, they will start thinking of it as a score. And then they will inevitably start recognizing and incorporating behaviors that tend to increase their personal score. Which leads to competition among them as to who can rack up the highest score, and that competition drives them into a spiral of increasingly extreme behavior in order to stay ahead of the pack.
If Twitter was smart they would just stop displaying follower, like and retweet counts altogether, or at least hide them away someplace deep within a pile of submenus and dialog boxes. Displaying this information prominently is what created the feedback loop that made Twitter into the cesspool it is today.
“Was that the right decision at the time? Probably not,” he said. “If I had to start the service again, I would not emphasize the follower count as much … I don’t think I would create ‘likes’ in the first place.”
If you put something in front of people that looks like a score, they will start thinking of it as a score. And then they will inevitably start recognizing and incorporating behaviors that tend to increase their personal score. Which leads to competition among them as to who can rack up the highest score, and that competition drives them into a spiral of increasingly extreme behavior in order to stay ahead of the pack.
If Twitter was smart they would just stop displaying follower, like and retweet counts altogether, or at least hide them away someplace deep within a pile of submenus and dialog boxes. Displaying this information prominently is what created the feedback loop that made Twitter into the cesspool it is today.