Twitter Jumping the Shark?

I fully blame Steve Gilmor and the other California blogging A-listers and tech gurus for nerfing Twitter -- getting the devs to get rid of a very basic function -- the ability to see what strangers are talking about to each other through their use of the @ function.

He's as much as admitting this now on FriendFeed and claiming that the re-introduction of Track will fix this. No. No. No. Not - because he would put in "filter Track" and that means essentially killing @ through the back door.

Let me go back and explain.

Twitter didn't jump the shark for me, as a 2-year-old early adapter, when Oprah joined or @aplusk threw the system over to get a million followers and get MSM to cover him the way it never could before Twitter. I just didn't follow them. That is the secret to EVERY problem and complaint in Twitter. Just don't follow and shut up!

Twitter didn't jump the shark for me awhile before that, when all kinds of adsters and social media gurus and life trainers and all of that sort of flotsam and jetsam showed up on Twitter. I just didn't follow them, and if the followed me, and they were doing that with automated programs and just selling crap mindlessly, I follow-blocked them just so they couldn't abuse me to get their follower count up -- but they'd be the only people I follow-blocked -- essentially hucksters and spammers. I never follow blocked anyone who talked back, criticized or even called me names. I don't believe in doing that. Only someone threatening violence in RL would get a block.

And before that, last summer, when Steve Gilmor of the Gilmor Gang behaved terribly, and bullied and harassed and silenced me on his show because I stood up to his oppressive nonsense on Twitter demanding vanity track-back filters, Twitter still didn't jump the shark, because Twitter is simple, basic, brilliant, a great antidote to Google and Facebook, both of which are too big and obnoxious.

But Twitter will seriously jump the shark for me now, if it doesn't listen to the #fixreplies frenzy and PUT IT BACK THE WAY IT WAS DAMMIT and push back against Gilmorism.

Now, you ask, why did the devs do this stupid thing? And the answer is, I'm fairly certain, is that they were beseiged by thin-skinned A-listers like Gilmor with whom they are networked in various ways, and various irritable and insecure venture capitalist and social media magnates like @craignewmark, to get rid of the ability of people they didn't like to talk back to them.

What @ajkeen and @davewiner and @scobleizer and @craignewmark all have in common is an overwhelming desire to have lots of "friends" who follow them, but they want them to be loyal, positive, and not talk back, except to warble about how they've read their books or gush about how wonderful they are.

What they definitely, definitely DO NOT like is when people they aren't following talk back to them using @. They hate it. It gets them into a frenzy. @craignewmark, at the heighth of the public scrutiny and criticism of him over the Craigslist murders, when I also happened to be criticizing him for being part of the technocommunism takeover and destruction of the Internet, like a flustered and fearful newbie kept banging on the controls at Twitter and asking out loud how he could SHUT UP people who talked back to him through @ -- like me. We would show up in his replies and he HAD to get rid of this. Like Steve Gilmore and others HAD to wipe out this sort of dissent.

(Ordinary people with insecurities and paranoia also hated this talking back, felt it was sometimes shocking and intrusive, and also demanded it on Get Satisfaction).

So here's how it worked:

First, the dev got rid of track -- it was track that Gilmor wanted to have filters in such as to be able to vanity-track one's name in searches and automated processes, but filter out @prokofy with the tekkies' infamous kill-file they've inflicted on the Internet since the Well days.Gilmor ever since has lobbied for the return of controlled track, and believes it's coming back (he may have inside knowledge).

Next, when track simply disappeared completely, they agitated to have something happen to get rid of the ability of people who were follow-blocked to stop watching. Of course, um, they are public figures, and we have the right to criticize them, but they HATED that back-chat with a passion. It was easy to get around, because all you had to do was go on Twitter's now-better search, look them up, and read them there.

So when the devs saw THAT happening, they bitched again at their lobster luncheons in San Francisco sipping their Chardonnay and got the search results to DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY a few weeks ago. I was fixing to blog that atrocity which I mightily bitched about on Twitter and anywhere else I could because it was just plain *anti-Internet*.  What was happening is I'd go to @ajkeen to see what he was saying, in search, because the bastard had follow-blocked me for calling him "a geek like all the rest" (!), and find that I had a view like this @AJKEEN HAS LOCKED HIS TWEETS. IM TO GET PERMISSION -- even though on my RL account, where he hadn't blocked me, I could see in fact he hadn't locked his tweets -- he was visible to all he let follow him vainly -- he loved that, and wouldn't lock up for the world -- but now INVISIBLE to people he didn't like.

I got around that nonsense by just putting the results into an RSS feed and sending it to Google reader to catch  up on now and then. Realizing this, perhaps, the devs that undid that nerf that made search results of people who follow-blocked you invisible (imagine if people did that to Google -- they'd never let it happen, it will kill them). So then we were back to being able to see the people who blocked us again. And really, this was a problem troubling a minority of users, as spammers who got follow-blocked just moved on to fresh victims with automated programs. Actual stalkers tended to get banned. But critics and dissenters now had to go to the bother of search/read page/answer -- into the void, as they were follow-blocked.

Then about a month ago, when the devs added the new more visible @ replies tab, that meant that back-chatters began to show up again. The Horrah! So the @ajkeens and @stevegilmors and @davewiners who hate people to criticize whined again -- whether merely out loud in general or specifically to the devs we'll never know -- and the system then was finally badly nerfed -- no more @ replies being visible from conversations you weren't privy to, becaues now unless you were allowed to follow someone, you couldn't see what they said to other people. Making for the precious, feted, thin-skinned, arrogant twit-o-verse that the A-listers -- all the followers, with none of the accountability.

Karoli, who is part of the problem, not part of the solution, who has follow-blocked me so that I can't see what she might say @ someone else, put it this way, now that she is suddenly finding the annoying side of blocking@:

"elites don't want broader conversation. they want little itty-bitty groups and a bunch of groupies"

EXACTLY!

This is complicated stuff to follow, and if you didn't get what I just wrote, well, go and try it.

If you aren't following someone, and they write something to someone else who *is* following them, you can't see it.

So there is no way to notice interesting conversations as you bumble along, friends of friends, so to speak, offered up to you in the stream - nor can you use search to find key words and follow people who are interesting, like moving from one conversational group to another at an art opening or cocktail party.

Fortunately, lots and lots of people bitched about this because it destroyed the innocent serendipity and interest value of Twitter, and wasn't really help to the "stalkers" problem anyway.

Look. Twitter is *social* media. That means you can't just use it as a broadcasting tool, like Scobleizer, endlessly collecting followers and pushing links, thoughts, ads to them and responding to them highly selectively, like a busy radio host with a live call-in show. Those are old media memes.

With Twitter, there is no one screening the live call-ins, and there is no limitation on them in minutes on your show between ads. They're whenever, whatever, and you have to deal with it.

Beyers Sellers, for all his faults, and they remain, at least got it that backchat is sacred. Second Life has written the book on backchat. You never, ever kill backchat. It's vital. This is like backchat. Do not touch it. It is the third-rail of social media. Screen it, filter it, try to stop it - you get electrocuted and die.

I think we might face something of a battle getting this back. That's because the powerful insecure but vain tekkies like @stevegilmor and @craignewmark want CONTROL. They want to do the disrupting. They do not want to be disrupted. They want to be new media moguls, not politicians forced to accountability in a new social arrangement. They want people like me to *shut up*.

But trying to shut off @prokofy coming into your @ because you are visible kills what is good about Twitter for most people, as I said, serendipity.

The lame, lame placebos that @ev and @biz are proffering for ways to still find interest on Twitter sound like the lame Lindens telling us that the adult grid is about making "RX more predictable" (remember, RX isn't a bottle of bitter pills to swallow, but code word for "Resident Experience".

@ev and @biz, please get @stevegilmor and @craignewmark 's cold, dead clutches of arrogant tekkie Web 1.0 off your marvelous Web 2.0 invention. Restore @ visibility in the tabs, in search, anywhere on third-party apps. Do not let these grumps turn Twitter into an adult version of the cliquish teenage AIM, or the mindless time-suck of closed ingroups on Plurk, or the silos of Facebook.

FIX REPLIES!

Comments

[Doubledown Tandino]

I'm not sure, but I think you're confusing the term "jumping the shark" with several other unrelated things.

a) the twitter a-listers aren't getting their way. If you follow mashable for example, they talk about all pros and cons. Scobleizer for example has been talking up a lot other than twitter.

b) the @reply and @mention feature has been around for longer than today, or this week. No idea why people decided to notice it today. If you start a tweet with @ its a reply, if you don't start it with @, then everyone sees it. Yes, the @reply views may change... the walkaround, obviously dont REPLY @ that one person if you want everyone to see it. "Do you understand @Prokovy? Everyone would see this message" "@prokovy , but not everyone would see this message"

c) jump the shark refers to one moment when a tv show desperately pulls a stunt to attract attention. The 'ashton kutcher & oprah' is more of a jump the shark moment than the a-listers continuing to tweet like they've done since day 1

[Prokofy Neva]

Um, I get what "jumping the shark" is, and I simply disagree with you about when that moment is, and apparently the literary device of comparing fail whales and jumped sharks went over your head. Oh well.

While sure, aplusk and oprah are shark-jumping -- they're shark-jumping by old media trying to be cool on new media. They are not shark-jumping on Twitter, which is fine without them.

But when the devs perform a radical feature-ectomy like this one, and start nerfing it beyond belief, that is jumping the shark in the sense that they tried to make something work because of various problems they had they couldn't fix in the system.

The reason TV programs would even have to jump the shark and get more desperate with gimmicks is because the shows were flagging and losing audiences.

In fact, once you peel away these nonce surges with aplusk and such, Twitter is in trouble. Friendfeed and Facebook both revamped themselves to be like Twitter and ate Twitter's lunch. Twitter's response is to try to frantically feature-cull and we'll see also feature-add to fix this.

Of course they're getting their way. You just haven't watched them and fought them as I have to see how it will work. They will not get this back. They will be told to shut up, and wait for track (the ability to write #word in your twitter stream and have it start picking up all tweets with that word from it, a command for tracking) -- which we used to have. And then mollified by saying they can do a track filter where it will edit out prokofy but still track your name.

It's not about noticing it today. You're all wrong about that.

People used it, and that's why when suddenly it was removed and they couldn't surf other people's convos, they rebelled.

The workaround is to put a symbol before like this: -@prokofy or .@prokofy

[Desmond Shang]

Some people can't handle more freedom than they are used to having.

I've run a group chat without moderation for three years. It's a 'closed' group to keep out ad spammers, an unfortunately necessary evil, but no one asking to join is turned away.

About every month or two someone gets furiously angry because someone states a disliked opinion on group chat. Sometimes a highly unpopular opinon, often relating to politics or religion or suchlike.

I point out that everyone has the same freedom to state their opinions, ignore the others or just outright close the chat, but that's just not good enough. The goal is to control the conversation until it matches the precise comfort zone parameters of the complainer (which vary from person to person). I refuse to moderate on those grounds every time.

As uncomfortable as the chat can get at times, it's still honest and real. Overall, it is more compelling than not because of this.

And that's exactly it: old versus new media. People can go back to the newspaper and television for a scripted feel~good experience. Teams of producers will ensure the content is entertaining, and never out of the comfort zone (unless you purposely choose that channel). Here however, it's the internet, and it's gonna get a little scrappy sometimes. It's worth it, because with that comes freedom like never before. Most people can handle that, and prefer it.

Prok, I told you early on that twitter sucks. It's gonna suck more and more. You are gonna lose this fight and twitter will be sanitised into irrelevancy, just you watch.

* * * * *

>>So when the devs saw THAT happening, they bitched again at their lobster luncheons in San Francisco sipping their Chardonnay and got the search results to DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY a few weeks ago.

One thing great about Prok is that he always gets our California diet right. I saw a lobster special just yesterday over angel hair pasta.

Didn't get that myself (went for the halibut and rice) but I think Prokofy has a begrudging respect for the cuisine of the dreaded California technocracy.

Plus, we've got some *great* wines here. France has been on notice for years. Even "Two Buck Chuck" (typically refers to Charles Shaw Chardonnay) astonishes; every chance I have to sneak some in when there are wine snobs about, I do. "What is that?" "Oh, Two Buck Chuck! Have a bottle or three to take home..."

True, we have our fast food moments like anyone else. But for all our other ills there's at least the organic veggies to fall back upon when we have finished with the housing, computer, energy, and telecom markets. Plus the great weather.

[Vaspers The Grate aka steven e. streight]

I agree with you. This is a great post and I'm twittering it now.