Twitter’s
leadership knows that
it’s basically broken,
and its latest attempt to fix
itself shows how daunting of a task that will be.
San Francisco — In March, Twitter cofounder biz Stone tweeted a screenshot of an iPhone homescreen along with a message: “Notice our
new prototype? … It’s called ‘twttr.’
The bird flew away from the
app icon representing: Simplicity. Blue
sky thinking. We’re re-working. Not there yet: hence, no logo.”
Twitter, predictably, immediately dysregulated in
response. “Most moronic design decision ever made.”
“It’s horrible.”
“Awful.” the most viral reply leaned on a popular Twitter trope to poke fun at the platform’s
inability to ban bad actors:
“everyone: get rid of the
Nazis. Yall: we got rid of the logo.”
And yet, it was all a misunderstanding. Twitter hadn’t modified its icon in the least. It launched a separate
app, “twttr,” as an external,
public prototype to
experiment with new features it’s
considering rolling out on Twitter itself; a way to test things publically. Stone clarified: “Folks,
the bird isn’t going away from
Twitter.”
