On Tuesday, Twitter posted a notice to its blog regarding a “small settings update.” Others have done a fine job of detailing the changes (here’s monkey_bite’s), so I won’t belabor the point here. Suffice it to say, the update resulted in users no longer seeing every post of those they follow.
The effect was noticeable. Some, myself included, sensed an unnatural calm settle over their Twitter feed. The calm before the storm, if you believe much of what’s been written about the user reaction that followed… billed by many as the second coming of Robespierre.
“Twitterers revolt over site changes” – techradar
“[People] around the world were angered…” – PC World
“change to the service… causing palpitations among users.” – BBC News
“the internet burst into flames upon hearing the news,” – webmonkey
“the firestorm is raging, out of control.” – MediaPost
Twitter responded quickly (some say with duct tape) to the opposition, attempting to bring back some of the functionality lost. Kudos to them for at least trying to react to vocal (and clearly deeply invested) user feedback. But, was this really a “raging firestorm?”
Yes, the subject was at the top of the trending list on Twitter Search. But, is it fair to compare this user reaction to the blow back Facebook has received from its users over the last couple of years?
I’m not so sure.
I ran a query on the number of tweets containing the hashtag created for the revolt, #fixreplies. The count? As of this post, just over 9000 since Tuesday night. (By comparison, at its peak, swine flu was getting over 25000 tweets per day over a period of several days.)
In a thousand tweet sample, the number of unique users was about 72%. Many of those upset with the changes were simply repeating their dissatisfaction.
If that ratio holds, we’re talking about approximately 6500 users complaining. According to Compete.com, almost 20 million unique visitors came to twitter.com last month. So, without even accounting for 3rd party apps, we’re declaring revolt due to a negative reaction from something less than 0.03% of visitors to the site?
In addition, to keep #fixreplies at the top of the trending list, many users repeated the hashtag within a single post. Tweets like the following were not uncommon:
Don’t get me wrong… I’m not a big fan of the changes either and there are certainly lessons to be learned about understanding and communicating with your users/customers (especially those who are high-value, invested, vocal and influential). But, was it really worthy of the hyperbolic prose?
What do you think?
Now pardon me while I go tweet about this. Hashtag, #relax.
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Filed under: Analytics, Channels, Social, Twitter | Tagged: #fixreplies, social media, Twitter
