Let's quickly review the 3 golden rules of software development :
- Rule #1 of software development : You never perform a featurectomy unless your users and/or clients ask for it. Especially when it's a feature intrinsic to user behaviour and interactivity with the product.
- Rule #2 of software development : Coders cannot forsee all uses for their products. Users usually discover what the product eventually can do for them through use or misuse or unforeseen uses.
- Rule #3 of software development : Break rules #1 and #2 and prepare yourself for a backlash of epic proportions
The people at Twitter have broken these golden rules in the matter of just a few hours and there's a deluge of complaints under the hashtag #fixreplies. A reaction that I am certain the people over at Twitter had no idea they would get what with the update posted by one of the founders (Biz Stone : @biz) on the company blog.
So let's take a moment to break down the train wreck created by the gentlemen (all the coders in the company are guys) of Twitter:
"Small settings update"? You have got to be a software developer to write a headline like that.
Most software developers make terrible user interface designers because to them software (and by extension the internet) is all about code. Software developers rarely think about the people who are going to use their product because 99% of the time they set out to create a product that only they themselves want to use. Coding to them is to satisfy an itch and not necessarily to serve or give wonderful experiences to others.
It's no wonder most people consider coders to be social misfits. When you have people who think tech (and the web) is all about the code and not the people, it's hard to look at them as "people persons".
And it's highly ironic that social media is so "code dependent"; especially if their code is proprietary. Especially with products like Twitter which is, in many ways, like one big cocktail party.
The thing is that back in the day Biz was "the guy" to go to for web design and development inspiration --to the point that Google hired him to clean up the Blogger/Blogspot mess they had bought from Pyra (which happened to be co-founded by another Twitter co-founder Evan Williams).
Of all people, Biz should have known that taking away a feature from users is never a "small thing". Especially if you have no real explanation other than "I thought it was a good idea".
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