Dear Twitter: Talk To Us.
An informal letter to one of our favorite social networks.
Hi Twitter,
I’m a fan, and for good reason. You seem to be able to capture the best bits of humanity’s discourse so very frequently. Whether it’s sports, a story about a crazy trip that may actually become a movie, live streams using a really cool HD camera, or the latest hip-hop beef (my favorite) - I can always count on there being something new going on when I open you up on my phone. You even got me writin’ (and gif’n) like I’m tweetin’ (so I’m sure you’ll excuse my syntax). #ThanksForUnderstanding
But something’s not quite right, and it’s not just me - almost everyone feels it. The media is not happy with you, and they’re very adamant that the other networks are running into your end zones. The market seems to have stopped understanding what you’re really around for (#DisappointedDad much?). Some more of your top leaders have left (and very quickly, might I add). There’s a good reason behind all of that, and I’m sure you’ve got an explanation for it all. But the worst news is when your users - that’s all of us - start breaking up with you. In public. #AwkwardBreakup
Now, just to be clear, I haven’t broken up with you yet. But some of your most loyal users are pretty hurt. For starters, they’ve been very critical of every rumored/potential feature release. They’re also constantly proclaiming to have stopped wanting to use you. #TheseUsersAintLoyal. But seriously - they don’t sound happy.
Usually, when this happens in real life, we have a conversation about it. We try to talk it out. We think about what’s going wrong. We gather our thoughts, and we have a frank exchange of feelings and opinions.
So a lot of us thought about it. From what I can tell, we’re saying a lot of things. But mostly:
#JustKidding. But it’s a lot of things, and they’ve been talking about them for a while.
Now, it’s very clear that you know there’s something wrong. Jack has been busy cleaning up your roadmap, and trying to make you easier to work with. He’s even started calling the shots on how that’s going to happen. That’s bold, and that might work.
But for all the belief in your ability to unite people, you’re getting pretty bad at communicating back to us. It’s not like you aren’t paying attention to what’s being said about you. But you aren’t telling us what you think about what everyone is saying about you. Twitter may be a network of 300+ million people, but who’s speaking for you? No one is telling us what’s up with Twitter from Twitter. Even your new product releases are being explained better by journalists.
We actually like using you, and that’s something you should build upon. Granted, of course, we’ll also use a lot of the other networks. Also, maybe we’ll use them a little more than we use you. But you must see that there’s so much life left on your network, and that there’s always going to be a need for real-time broadcasting as a medium for information exchange. This cuts across so much of what we do in our daily lives, and you can do so much with that and with us.
So talk to us. Tell us what you think about what’s going on with you. Tell us how you’re fixing things. Tell us what’s coming next, and how that’s going to help us work with you better. Give us details, and walk us through how things are going to improve. I’m sure this will help the people working to make you better too. Don’t give up on what you stand for. We haven’t.
We’ve always used you to talk about what we want to talk about. It’s time you reached out to us and used yourself that way too.
It may not be much, but we are around and we are listening. #GoodLuck
Always around,
@Pai_dPiper
