Twitter is too important to be owned by Twitter
When I spoke on a panel at RTLM NY â11, I got a little rise out of the crowd when I said âTwitter is too important to be owned by Twitter.â This is still absolutely true, and yesterday was a great example of that: the #fuckyouwashington debacle.
If you havenât heard, Jeff Jarvis started something on Twitter last night: #fuckyouwashington
.
As of right this second, when I search for #fuckyouwashington on Twitter, theyâre coming in at two or three a second. Itâs crazy. And itâs really interesting to read what people have to say, pro and con, picking their own issues, all of that stuff. Yet, itâs been removed from the trending topics.
Now, maybe this particular trend was simply blocked because of the profanity. Sure, whatever. I donât like that, but some might. And Twitter certainly allows all kinds of trends to stick around that would also be âoffensive,â for example, #babymakingsong, #turnoff, and #itsalwaystheuglypeople are currently trending. Donât even get me started on trends like #whatblackgirlslike #whatwhitegirls like and the other racially charged topics. Sure, fine, itâs their site, they can do whatever they want.
That, however, is the root of the issue: they can do whatever they want. And weâre all beholden to them. Nothing we can do. Maybe Iâm not sensitive to four letter words, and I do want to hear about things like this. Too bad, Twitter says no. Maybe I donât want promoted tweets added to my stream. Too bad, Twitter says yes.
And thatâs why Iâm feeling worse and worse about Twitter every day. It sucks, because I really like Twiter, the website. But Twitter, the company, really bums me out. They promised all of us nerds long ago that they wouldnât do this kind of thing, and theyâre not keeping that promise. Which means Iâm not really getting emotionally invested in Twitter any more. Itâs still valuable enough to me to keep using, but I canât care about it the way I used to.
This is why weâre still hacking away at rstat.us. If you havenât heard about it before, you can read my release announcement. If youâre lazier than that, hereâs the summary: rstat.us is a distributed, open-source Twitter. You can use our public node at the website, or get your own copy of the code and run your own, make whatever customizations youâd like, and youâre still on equal footing with everyone else in the network. Weâre on the cusp of a 1.0 announcement, and Iâd love to have been able to make that in this post, but weâre still working out some last kinks. If youâve seen it before, you wonât find much differences right now, but we have 100% standards compliance, a complete visual refresh, and some other fun goodies waiting in the wings, ready to come out shortly.
Just remember: if you use a service like Twitter thatâs controlled by a company like Twitter, you have to play by their rules. And sometimes, theyâll change the rules, and itâll be time to move on.