Twitter Is Dying. #Period.

UPDATE: I AM AN IDIOT. APPARENTLY TWITTER FIXED THE PERIOD PROBLEM LAST YEAR AND I DID NOT GET THE MEMO. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GROW UP WITH UHF.

Wherever you see “period”, please substitute threaded conversations with multiple people, bots, nazis, lists, and anything else you want to complain about

Growing up, we had a TV that got UHF, sort of. You had to find a channel that seemed to have reception and then hold the round antennae while doing various Bikram Yoga poses to get it to work. I don’t see a lot of people buying TV services for their UHF features these days, even though it seems that we do.

I bring this up because using Twitter is starting to feel like trying to watch UHF.

I am not talking about the lack of user growth and its collapsing stock.

I am not talking about the company being run by a guy who sounds like he should be managing Trump instead of an unusual Internet service that feels like a public utility for narcissists, sadists, marketers and journalists.

I am not talking about a medium that once felt like the home of the SEO industry starting to feel like it’s not the place where the most interesting discussions happen anymore.

I am talking about the #Period.

Today I was listening to KCRW while proving my suburban manhood by actually doing physical activity around the house. For those of you not familiar with KCRW, it is one of the best stations on the planet IMO. Check it out here. 

The DJ, Aaron Byrd, had just played a great set and so I went to @ItsAByrd on Twitter, followed him and hit the “Tweet To Aaron Byrd” button to let him know how much I loved it. I got the following “Write Tweet” screen with Byrd’s Twitter handle pre-filled in:

Since I am a narcissist, a marketer and occasionally do pseudo-journalism, I wanted to share my appreciation of KCRW with all of my followers, to spread the love as it were. But in order to do so I had to insert a period ahead of “@ItsAByrd”. I was on my phone so that involved messing with moving the cursor which while not a hard thing to do, it’s certainly not the most fun thing to do. To put it in Silicon Valley parlance, it’s not “delightful”.

Oh, and it’s basically the mobile Web equivalent of standing on one foot while trying to get the UHF channel to come in.

I am certainly not God’s gift to product design but Christ, make it easy for someone to share a conversation with more than one person.

I can put up with a lot of kludgy stuff for a great experience, but if Twitter can’t get rid of as much complexity as possible, particularly on what I would think are a number of “easy” wins, it is going the way of UHF, eventually.

Until then, it’s still the greatest 🙂

thank you sir!

— Aaron Byrd (@itsAByrd) August 6, 2017