Twitter’s Tightrope

Twitter’s strength is that it’s cool. Twitter’s problem is that it’s cool.

Although my tweets connect me to the whole world, when I use Twitter I’msocialising. This implies privacy: Twitter as a whole might be just a social network, but my Twitter is a network I choose, a network I build: my network. My Twitter is something personal.

Socialising is cool. Everyone loves it. Any place, person, book, film, album, or website that gives people an excuse to get to know other people is cool. Services like Twitter are the alcohol of the web: they matter because they give people an excuse to communicate. Like a cool club or a chilled-out coffee shop, Twitter’s popularity depends on people wanting to be there.

Advertising is not personal; advertising is maybe one of the most impersonal things in our culture: to advertisers, you are a number; a calculation; an entry on a spreadsheet. Friends care that I like music because it’s what makes me, me; advertisers care that I like music because it means they can sell me music: replace me with a robot who’ll buy CDs, and watch to see if the advertisers care.

This is where we come to the Quick Bar. The Quick Bar is not cool.

If you’re not already aware, the Quick Bar was introduced in the most recent update to Twitter’s iPhone app. It’s an over-obvious black bar that hovers over the top of the main interface and shouts out random trends and hashtags. Charlie Sheen has featured a lot recently — it’s about as bad as it sounds.

The Quick Bar is pretty obviously a way to do two things: get you more involved in Twitter, and show you more ads. Both of these are ways for Twitter to make money: the ads for obvious reasons, and the involvement because the more you use Twitter, the more they know about you and the easier it is for them to target their advertising efforts efficiently.

That might sound like a cynical, anti-capitalist assessment: it’s not. Twitter wants to make money, that’s fine: I’m happy for them to do that. I just don’t want their money-making efforts in my face; you can put adverts on the walls of your coffee shop, but don’t float them on top of my coffee.

The Quick Bar fails because it’s a poorly thought out, impersonal intrusion on the social network of every single person who uses Twitter’s iPhone app. It’s as though the guy at Starbucks walked up and pushed ads in front of your face while you were drinking your coffee. It’s not just bad, it’s stupid: as a business decision, it’s probably the single worst thing Twitter has done for it’s iPhone users since the iPhone app was launched.

Social networks tread a fine line. They offer a way for millions of people to create connections which are both personal and social, then they make money out of those connections in a way that’s inherently impersonal and antisocial. That’s not impossible, but it can be damn difficult, as Twitter is learning. Too little of the uncool advertising, and you make no money: your business fails. Too much of the uncool, and your users leave: your business fails. Tread carefully.