Over the weekend, I couldn’t help but notice a very interesting tweet by Twitter engineer Alex Payne. I couldn’t help it because a number of people in my stream were retweeting it, or talking about it. I took one look at it, and knew it was a story — because, well, that’s what I do. A few minutes later, Mike called me to tell me to check out this tweet — because, well, that’s what he does. Something that maybe doesn’t get talked about enough in blogging is the importance of a good eye. And good instincts. I’d say it’s maybe the most important trait for being good at what we do.
Anyway, so there’s this tweet (which Payne, has since deleted, by the way), and it’s obviously the basis for a post. Payne wrote, “If you had some of the nifty site features that we Twitter employees have, you might not want to use a desktop client. (You will soon.)” That’s interesting on a couple levels:
1) There’s a new version of the Twitter site that the team in internally testing and coming soon
2) Payne is implying it’s at least as good as (or better) than desktop (third-party) Twitter clients
Number 1 alone is worth a post, but number 2 makes it much more interesting. And I’m hardly the only one who thinks so — within minutes of the tweet, Payne was getting @replies from third-party Twitter developers unclear of how to take such a statement. And TechCrunch was getting tips about it as well from other third-party developers, worried about it.
So I write the post. Almost immediately, some people who also work at Twitter start complaining. When I ask why the complaints, I get, “You report on a vague remark with vagaries and speculation. I’ve seen you do real journalism. You can do better.”
I don’t know, to me, that statement doesn’t seem vague at all (especially for a communication platform built around 140 character limits). But I think I treated the statement fairly, citing a developer who was spooked by the statement, and Payne’s immediate (calming) response to him. I then talk about new features on Twitter, simplicity, yadda, yadda. I end by wondering what new features could be coming to the site, and if they will in fact compete with those offered by third-parties. Again, that seems fair to me as Payne is implying it.
So why do Twitter employees (and others) get mad? Because we’re amplifying the statement Payne made which they think he shouldn’t have. This is nothing new, it happens all the time in all forms of media. And companies hate it because they want to be in control of the message. But the fact of the matter is that he made an interesting statement, and people are clearly interested in reading about it, reading thoughts about it, and leaving their own comments about it.
I drives me crazy when companies are happy with me for any sort of positive story, then pissed off for anything that can be seen as even just somewhat negative. If everything I write is positive, I’m not doing my job. I’d much prefer it if companies gave me neither praise when I’m positive or hate when I’m negative. I make the calls on what to write. That’s my job. You make the calls on what to produce. That’s your job.
Anyway, what really irks me about that type of negativity is that much of it is implying it’s all a traffic ploy. I mean, I suppose professional blogging itself can be characterized as a traffic ploy in a way, but if that story was one, I could have done much, much better.
As most of you know (and have told me, which I appreciate), I’m very good at titles. Had I wanted to get as much traffic as possible from a post like that, I would have gone with something like “Twitter Planning Website To Kill Third-Party Developers” or “Twitter Engineer Bitch Slaps Development Community” or “Twitter To Make Its Third-Party Developers Weep Second-Rate Tears.” I could do this all day. Instead, I went with “Twitter To Add “Nifty” Site Features That May Make You Forget Third-Party Clients.”
As a title, it’s long-winded, clunky. Worse, it’s far too passive (why include “may” — well, because I felt I should). But I went with it because I think it accurately gets what Payne said across and is still somewhat interesting. But it’s hardly a traffic ploy. Business Insider went more in that direction with “Twitter Rolling Out New Web Site To Kill TweetDeck And Other Third-Party Clients.” That’s also kind of long-winded, but it mentions the very popular desktop client, TweetDeck, (which Payne, never did, by the way) and has the keyword in there: “kill.” Not that I blame them — I use it from time to time as well; it’s a good tactic. But again, I wasn’t going for that here.
But here’s my favorite part about all of this. Twitter clearly didn’t think Payne should have said such a thing, and neither did Payne, who not only deleted the tweet, but has since apologized for it multiple times on Twitter. But I don’t think Payne should have apologized at all, and I don’t think Twitter should have cared in the slightest about the tweet.
From my perspective, what Payne said is absolutely right. Twitter should be trying to build the best client it can. It should have better features than third-party clients. It’s their damn product!
Instead, they’re pussyfooting around, scared to death of pissing off their development community. I get it. The community is extremely important, especially since they’re battling Facebook in a platform war. But I don’t know. I think that by making your product as good as possible — better than third-party ones — you’re challenging your community to do better. Who wants a shitty developer community that you have to prop-up by dumbing your product down? That’s a recipe for longterm failure.
My point, I guess, is this: Companies should stop knee-jerk bitching about coverage. Make your product the best it can be and the coverage will either glow or simply won’t matter. And also let your product handle the rebuttals. Make it awesome, and shut me up. And let your employees say whatever they want. There’s nothing wrong with honesty or being interesting.
[photo: flickr/spaceamoeba]
