There were two bits of news which caught my eye today. The first broke early this morning regarding what is, essentially, a loyalty test for current Twitter employees. Apparently, the current owner gave people until 5 p.m. ET today to decide whether or not they were “hardcore” enough to continue to work for him. In the note, according to news reports, Twitter’s owner said, “At its heart, Twitter is a software and servers company …”
The gasp I let out when I read that.
But let’s park that for a moment while we talk about the other news bit I wanted to share. It’s the recent “On the Media” mid-week podcast episode about Twitter and Mastodon, their similarities and differences; take a listen before we move on:
Now one idea both these items have in common boils down to one of the fundamental values of Twitter: conversation. It’s not a stretch these days to say Twitter’s current owner fundamentally doesn’t understand its value. And his recent ultimatum to staff, reducing the platform down to — what was it again? — “software and servers,” is just so far off the mark. I mean, seriously, I’m having a hard time adequately putting into words how completely misguided this thinking is.
But this isn’t the place to go on and on about everything he gets wrong. Instead, I want to point out just one of the many ways Tweeps used to think and work toward creating what we called “the conversation layer of the internet.” In 2018 (actually, it was exactly four years ago yesterday), the Design and Research team invited Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters, to talk to us about how we could make sure that our work was helping create a place where people would feel comfortable to come to have those conversations. We learned about how people need to feel welcomed, we took part in workshops on how to shape constructive conversations, and we were constantly reminded that we were building to account for the unpredictability of humans.
Now, if we think about Clive Thompson’s conversation with Brooke Gladstone on that embedded episode of “On the Media,” you’ll hear how the people who are fleeing for Mastodon are still doing some of the conversation curation work that we were trying to build into the product. But instead of Twitter’s product decisions helping keep you part of — or away from — particular discussions, on Mastodon, moderators are having to do the work that our product design decision used to do for you.
See, it’s much more than “software and servers.”
As I revisit these ideas, I’m sad all over again. Twitter gets compared to a lot of other types of social media. But one thing that’s been true almost every day since its inception is that Twitter is not like any other platform. And no other platform will ever be like it. It attracted a certain type of person who favored the written word over video, was able to context-shift in the matter of 140 characters, and who were more than happy to speak truth to power and find a community of like-minded folks to gather with to make real change in the real world. Yes, the “Twitter is not real life” people have a point. But to ignore the influence people on Twitter were able to impose on the powerful is to completely ignore meaningful movements that have literally changed the world.
Somewhere
16 November 2022
The right of the people peaceably to assemble.
There were two bits of news which caught my eye today. The first broke early this morning regarding what is, essentially, a loyalty test for current Twitter employees. Apparently, the current owner gave people until 5 p.m. ET today to decide whether or not they were “hardcore” enough to continue to work for him. In the note, according to news reports, Twitter’s owner said, “At its heart, Twitter is a software and servers company …”
The gasp I let out when I read that.
But let’s park that for a moment while we talk about the other news bit I wanted to share. It’s the recent “On the Media” mid-week podcast episode about Twitter and Mastodon, their similarities and differences; take a listen before we move on:
Now one idea both these items have in common boils down to one of the fundamental values of Twitter: conversation. It’s not a stretch these days to say Twitter’s current owner fundamentally doesn’t understand its value. And his recent ultimatum to staff, reducing the platform down to — what was it again? — “software and servers,” is just so far off the mark. I mean, seriously, I’m having a hard time adequately putting into words how completely misguided this thinking is.
But this isn’t the place to go on and on about everything he gets wrong. Instead, I want to point out just one of the many ways Tweeps used to think and work toward creating what we called “the conversation layer of the internet.” In 2018 (actually, it was exactly four years ago yesterday), the Design and Research team invited Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters, to talk to us about how we could make sure that our work was helping create a place where people would feel comfortable to come to have those conversations. We learned about how people need to feel welcomed, we took part in workshops on how to shape constructive conversations, and we were constantly reminded that we were building to account for the unpredictability of humans.
Now, if we think about Clive Thompson’s conversation with Brooke Gladstone on that embedded episode of “On the Media,” you’ll hear how the people who are fleeing for Mastodon are still doing some of the conversation curation work that we were trying to build into the product. But instead of Twitter’s product decisions helping keep you part of — or away from — particular discussions, on Mastodon, moderators are having to do the work that our product design decision used to do for you.
See, it’s much more than “software and servers.”
As I revisit these ideas, I’m sad all over again. Twitter gets compared to a lot of other types of social media. But one thing that’s been true almost every day since its inception is that Twitter is not like any other platform. And no other platform will ever be like it. It attracted a certain type of person who favored the written word over video, was able to context-shift in the matter of 140 characters, and who were more than happy to speak truth to power and find a community of like-minded folks to gather with to make real change in the real world. Yes, the “Twitter is not real life” people have a point. But to ignore the influence people on Twitter were able to impose on the powerful is to completely ignore meaningful movements that have literally changed the world.
See you tomorrow?