DEAR HENRY BLODGET: Don’t Mean To Be Rude, But It’s Possible That Twitter Knows More About What It’s Doing Than You Do
Gotta love Henry Blodget. About once a week he busts out the caps lock key to draw attention to his latest rant. The best ones include some variation of the wording “don’t mean to be rude” in the title.
The only problem is that often these missives are misguided, or flat-out wrong.
Back in October, Blodget wrote the following story: ATTENTION APPLE FANS: Samsung Blowing Past Apple To Become The Biggest Smartphone Vendor Is Not Good News. Looking back, on the surface alone, the post looks ridiculous now because — wait for it — Apple actually passed Samsung in sales again last quarter. But the real key is that his entire argument was fundamentally flawed for a number of reasons, which I laid out at the time.
Anyway.
Today, Blodget is back at it with: DEAR TWITTER: Don’t Mean To Be Rude, But Maybe It’s Time To Hire A Full-Time Product Guy?
Caps lock?
Check.
“Don’t mean to be rude”?
Check.
Essentially, Blodget argues that Twitter needs to hire “a full-time product guy” — which they already have, by the way — because Jack Dorsey isn’t cutting it, as he tries to juggle two jobs.
Blodget argues that not even Steve Jobs could juggle two jobs, then conveniently leaves out the years that Jobs was leading both Apple and Pixar. Yes, he was primarily focused on Apple, but he was still the CEO of Pixar. Those Disney deals didn’t negotiate themselves. It was a mere 9 years of overlap as CEO of both companies. No biggie.
His next argument is that Dorsey isn’t doing his job because TweetDeck has gotten worse. That product, of course, is a recent addition after an acquisition in mid-2011. And the team is still run out of the UK, largely autonomously, as I understand it.
Blodget hates the new update and blames Dorsey. I’m actually of the opposite mindset. I like the newest update a lot more than the old version. For one thing, they finally ditched Air, so the performance isn’t quite as asserific as it was before.
Another argument for why Twitter needs to remove Dorsey is that people spend more time on Facebook these days, while Twitter has remained flat in terms of time spent on the web. He mentions the fact that many people use Twitter clients, but totally discounts it. This is immediately after his argument about TweetDeck, mind you.
The most powerful aspect of Twitter, to me, is its mobile/client usage. The website is fine, but not its core, in my opinion. Some love it, some hate it. It will never be Facebook — it doesn’t have to be. Twitter’s mobile experience (no matter which app you use) is much better than Facebook’s because the simple nature of the network is a more natural fit for mobile.
But now we’re just arguing differences in opinions. The key is that it’s possible — just possible, mind you — that Twitter actually knows more about how the company is doing than either one of us does.
Does that mean the product is perfect? Of course not. But there are these cycles in the tech press where Twitter is either the greatest thing ever that is vital to the Internet or the dumbest thing ever that needs to be completely re-done. It has been this way since the beginning of the service. It will continue to be this way.
Twitter is an integral part of the Internet. It’s unavoidable on just about every television show you watch these days. It’s all anyone talks about on ESPN and in professional sports in general now. When news breaks, more and more people head to Twitter — if they didn’t find it there to begin with. Twitter is now a part of iOS. There are undoubtedly many more exciting things in the works.
But fuck all that. Henry Blodget doesn’t like the most recent TweetDeck changes! Throw Jack Dorsey out on his ass and Shut. It. Down. Let’s go home!
At least until next month when we undoubtedly get the following post: ATTENTION TWITTER DOUBTERS: You Were So Wrong. 10 Reasons Why — [Slideshow].
