Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive

Re:Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive by danilocampos on Sunday March 20, 2011 @09:12PM (#2347979)

Marco nails it.

The whole value proposition of Twitter, historically, has been that you can make it whatever you would like it to be. Are you Captain Nerd? Load up that stream with the finest of curated nerds and be soaked in their wisdom, go! Are you nuts about celebrity culture? Sports? Food? Just want to keep up with your friends and colleagues? You're covered.

The Dickbar is a violation of that understanding that needlessly undermines Twitter's brand and utility among the fiercest of its loyalists. There are many better ways to monetize the experience here. AdWords-style keyword based stuff being the most obvious, and most likely to be virtuous. Pitch me awesome iDevice accessories and apps all day long – I bet I'd actually care about them. Design sites? I'll check it out! Magic kitchen tools? Where?! Awesome restaurants near me? I will eat there!

Sports? Celebrities? Hell. No.

This is crass and it's a fuck up, plain and simple. Five years from now we'll look back and one of two things will be on our minds:

"Wow, glad Twitter rethought that garbage and built something that truly worked for both users and advertisers. What a powerhouse they are."

"Twitter? Was that like Friendster or something? I think I remember it."

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Re:Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive by bryanh on Monday March 21, 2011 @01:10AM (#2348567)

Targeted ads are so obvious that I don't understand why they haven't implemented it. Google did it successfully. Facebook did it successfully. In fact, if someone would have said to me a year ago "Twitter will totally ignore their massive pool of user specific data in favor of blanket ads!" I would have literally laughed in their face. "Twitter isn't that thick!" I'd say.

It reminds me of the time I tried to partner with a local print heavyweight over a local portal site w/ a super premo domain. His suggestion was to purchase and post AP content on it.

I just don't follow Twitter's strategy here.

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Re:Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive by danilocampos on Monday March 21, 2011 @01:14AM (#2348573)

It's truly just... insane. There's not a better word for it than that. My tweets are a wealth of data about things I care about. There are so many ways to sell truly useful ads against that – you have to be off your nut not to take this approach. Real-time ads that solve your problems without you doing anything more than gabbing away could make Google look like a two-bit lemonade stand.

"Fuck, I hate AT&T. Worst cell phone service ever."

"Join Verizon today! Get $100 credit when you switch from AT&T."

"... Go on."

edit: And assuming you use Twitter mostly for passive consumption, there's still useful to be derived from your stream. "Boy, this guy sure follows a lot of people from Portland, let's show him Moe's Bike shop ads."

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Re:Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive by bryanh on Monday March 21, 2011 @01:20AM (#2348587)

How many dozens of Twitter NLP companies for tracking brands are there? Twitter should buy their favorite, and offer brand reinforcement and steal-away ads. Better already.

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Re:Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive by Luc on Monday March 21, 2011 @11:47AM (#2350210)

What's NLP? Google didn't help - unless it stands for 'Neuro-Linguistic Programming'...

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Re:Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive by svmegatron on Monday March 21, 2011 @11:56AM (#2350256)

Natural Language Processing, I think

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Re:Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive by thienan on Tuesday March 22, 2011 @04:14AM (#2353561)

thanks

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Re:Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive by notahacker on Monday March 21, 2011 @09:13AM (#2349491)

Isn't the other major problem that "promoted tweets" simply take people to a stream of tweets with that hashtag, which could include smart competitors?

I'd assume it isn't that difficult to write a bot that autoposts with that hashtag each time a "trending topic" vaguely relevant to their area of business shows up. Certainly not compared with the SEO dance.

And if spammers are optimising their ads better than you..

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Re:Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive by cabalamat on Sunday March 20, 2011 @11:10PM (#2348250)

> Five years from now we'll look back and one of two things will be on our minds

You are probably right. But how, in that case, do Twitter monetize their service?

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Re:Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive by alnayyir on Sunday March 20, 2011 @11:21PM (#2348291)

>. There are many better ways to monetize the experience here. AdWords-style keyword based stuff being the most obvious, and most likely to be virtuous.

Did you read the comment?

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Re:Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive by cabalamat on Sunday March 20, 2011 @11:25PM (#2348309)

I must admit I did miss that part of it blush

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Re:Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive by khafra on Monday March 21, 2011 @08:06AM (#2349325)

To be fair, that was over 140 characters into the comment.

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