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Design industry tweets twitter

Twitter Blues

Before the present owner, I was a Twitter Blue customer, because I always pay for software—to support its creators and help prevent it from disappearing, as so many great websites and platforms have done over the years. 

It wasn’t about the Twitter Blue pro features, to be honest, because they were few and inessential.

For instance, the ability to unsend a tweet for 30 seconds turned out to be more of an annoyance than an asset. Its value could be replicated without the feature, simply by taking a few seconds to reread your post before hitting Send. Most of the time, the feature felt to me like an annoying delay before every tweet went up.

And as Twitter compulsion is closely connected to the dopamine hit of instant gratification—voila! your thought is out there in the world, quick as the firing of a synapse!—waiting 30 seconds soon came to feel like a drag on the experience, not a benefit worth paying for. Like a cigarette that takes thirty seconds to deliver nicotine when you drag on it.

Nevertheless, as long as I had the income to do so, I would have continued to pay, simply to help Twitter keep going.

Because we’ve all seen what happens to beloved platforms after they run for too long on fumes. Investors grab lifeboats. Founders sell to a new owner who rapidly enshittifies the platform. Or the product disappears. Or it lingers as an under-resourced shadow of its former self, like a loved one with a tragically wasting disease. (Something I know far too much about.)

Besides: Twitter, as a town square, was important. Leaving its future health to the mercies of subscription models and advertising was risky enough.

Just as, despite the many obstacles to true representative democracy that threaten my country, it remains my sacred duty to vote, so too—as a user and fellow creator—did it feel like my duty to vote for Twitter’s continued existence with my wallet. (Again, acknowledging the privilege of having employment and at least a modicum of disposable income.) 

I won’t rehash the history of the new regime’s dangerous decisions and confounding errors of judgement—and that’s putting it charitably. Or share my anxieties about the Beloved Platform turning into a red-pilled fuckfest of racist, sexist pile-ons. 

Even when a longtime web acquaintance persuaded the new owner to “democratize” the blue checkmark by charging for it (and we’ll skip that history, which is still in progress, as well), I kept using Twitter, kept paying my Twitter Blue dues, and kept hoping for the best.

Even as brilliant people with vital jobs got kicked out by the thousands. Even when respected friends and colleagues abandoned Twitter like it was a room that smelled of corpses. Even when each day’s freshly absurd Twitter news cycle conjured disbelief worthy of U.S. Election Night 2016.

“Maybe it won’t be so bad,” I whispered to myself.

“I’ll hang in there,” I said.

As if continuing to use Twitter was some bizarre loyalty test to the platform itself, and not to the ideas and human beings that drove it. Like loyalty to a friend who drives his car into trees while drunk. “I’m not going to abandon him now, he needs help.”

Here comes the punchline: one day Twitter emailed me to say that my Twitter Blue account was being discontinued, but I would soon have the opportunity to pay for an exciting *new* version of Twitter Blue.

Then Twitter emailed me inviting me to roll over my credit card so as to become a member of the new Twitter Blue. Which made me wonder: do I continue to go by the principle of paying for software I use, even when I disapprove of the direction in which a new owner is taking the platform? Or do I register my dislike of that direction by refusing to pay, even if it accelerates the death of the platform? (Whereas I was still hoping for the platform to survive and right itself, no pun intended.)

In the end, and I know I’ll lose many of you here, I decided to keep paying. And now the promised punchline: Twitter was unable to accept my credit card, and the subscription failed. 

I tried for maybe 30 minutes.

I’ve successfully used software for over 30 years, and I’ve written a few things about UX and web design and development, so I generally have some idea of what I’m doing when I interact with internet content, and I also know that shopping carts are supposed to work. They’re not supposed to make users think. They’re supposed to make it easy to pay, whether you actually need the product or not.

Yet somehow—I wonder if it had to do with (illegally) firing most of the staff?—Twitter was not able to take my money.

The attempt to subscribe failed. Over and over. Perhaps it was my higher power telling me something. Perhaps it was my unconscious telling me something. But most likely, it was simple engineering and UX incompetence, caused by the removal of almost everyone at Twitter who knew what they were doing.

And the second punchline? I still have my blue checkmark. Which I’ve had since, like, 2006, or whenever the original Twitter first bestowed it. I guess because I’m of some small note in my field.

Of course, for all of having 322K followers, almost nobody sees my tweets, as the stats (and lack of engagement) plainly show me.

So either most of my 322K followers have abandoned the platform, or the algorithm works to minimize my footprint. And, theoretically, that latter situation would change if I paid Twitter the monthly $8—or, I believe it has gone up to $11, now, with price increases over time part of this week’s strategy to frighten folks into subscribing while they can still afford do so.

But I tried to give Twitter my money, even when I had Enormous Doubts that it was the right thing to do. And they simply wouldn’t take it. La de da. And for now I’m content to wait, peck my posts into the maw of the blind white whale, and see what changes next. 

Twitter Blue, Twitter Blues, Twitter blew it.

Categories
Design social media social networking software twitter

“A $44 billion version of MySpace.”

The beautiful Twitterific icon, designed by The Iconfactory. Rest in peace.

My longtime friend and former collaborative partner Craig Hockenberry bids a dignified adieu to Twitterific, Twitter, and his mom … and calls for a standards-based universal timeline. — The Shit Show

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business Career client management client services clients Design experience glamorous industry IXD Microblogging Own your content project management The Essentials The Profession twitter UX Web Design Wit and Wisdom work

Design Kickoff Meetings

Posted here for posterity:

Design kickoff meetings are like first dates that prepare you for an exciting relationship with a person who doesn’t exist.

Categories
I see what you did there tweets twitter

Two Kinds of People

THERE ARE two kinds of people: those who hold the door open for others, and those who walk through without thanking me. #

Categories
Design The Essentials tweets twitter Usability

Usability Testing

USABILITY TESTING doesn’t reveal problems in your product so much as it uncovers arrogance in your thinking. #

Categories
Best practices Blogs and Blogging Community Design engagement Responsibility State of the Web twitter writing

140 Characters is a Joke

THERE IS ALWAYS more to the story than what we are told. I am not omniscient. It is better to light a single candle than to join a lynch mob. Other people’s behavior is not my business. Truth is hard, epigrams are easy. Anything worth saying takes more than 140 characters. Blogging’s not dead. F____ the 140 character morality police.

Categories
business creativity CSS CSS3 style The Profession Tools twitter Typography Usability User Experience UX Zeldman

Advanced web design links

FROM MY TWITTER STREAM of late:

Okay, that last one isn’t a web design link and the Apple comment could go either way, but that’s how I roll. Follow me on Twitter for more snarkeractive funucation!

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Announcements Appearances Authoring Best practices Brands Design Designers development E-Books editorial events glamorous HTML5 industry Interviews Luls Microauthoring Microblogging microformats Micropublishing Molehill New Riders Platforms plugins podcasts Publications Publishing Real type on the web Responsive Web Design software Standards State of the Web Tempest The Big Web Show This never happens to Gruber twitter type Typekit Urbanism Usability User Experience UX W3C Web Design Web Design History Web Standards webfonts webkit Websites Zeldman zeldman.com

Questions, Please: Jeffrey Zeldman’s Awesome Internet Design Panel today at SXSW Interactive

HEY, YOU WITH THE STARS in your eyes. Yes, you, the all too necessary SXSW Interactive attendee. Got questions about the present and future of web design and publishing for me or the illustrious panelists on Jeffrey Zeldman’s Awesome Internet Design Panel at SXSW Interactive 2011? You do? Bravo! Post them on Twitter using hashtag #jzsxsw and we’ll answer the good ones at 5:00 PM in Big Ballroom D of the Austin Convention Center.

Topics include platform wars (native, web, and hybrid, or welcome back to 1999), web fonts, mobile is the new widescreen, how to succeed in the new publishing, responsive design, HTML5, Flash, East Coast West Coast beefs, whatever happened to…?, and many, many more.

Comments are off here so you’ll post your questions on Twitter.

The panel will be live sketched and live recorded for later partial or full broadcast via sxsw.com. In-person attendees, arrive early for best seats. Don’t eat the brown acid.

Categories
"Found Objects" Community SXSW twitter

The Twitters of Southby

20110312-NodeXL-Twitter-sxsw by Marc Smith.

From: www.connectedaction.net.

Connections among the Twitter users who recently mentioned sxsw when queried on March 12, 2011 scaled by numbers of followers.

A larger version (zoom for details) is available here: www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/5521097041/sizes/o/.

Categories
Community Design tweets twitter Urbanism Usability User Experience UX

Anatomy of the Goodreads.com Friend Spam Dark Pattern

Goodreads.com is social cataloging service for books. In this post you will see how they’ve used the friend spam dark pattern, but how they’ve also failed to make it go viral. This makes it interesting to carry out a post mortem and work out what they should have done.”

Anatomy of the Goodreads.com Friend Spam Dark Pattern

(Hat tip: Andrew Travers.)

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Blue Beanie Day books Browsers creativity CSS CSS3 Design Designers DOM DWWS E-Books editorial Happy Cog™ HTML HTML5 Ideas industry tweets twitter Voting W3C Web Design Web Design History Web Standards webtype XHTML Zeldman

Blue Beanie Day Haiku Contest – Win Prizes from Peachpit and A Book Apart

ATTENTION, web design geeks, contest fans, standards freaks, HTML5ophiles, CSSistas, grammarians, bookworms, UXers, designers, developers, and budding Haikuists. Can you do this?

Do not tell me I
Am source of your browser woes.
Template validates.

Write a web standards haiku (like that one), and post it on Twitter with the hashtag #bbd4 between now and November 30th—which happens to be the fourth international Blue Beanie Day in support of Web Standards.

Winning haikus will receive free books from Peachpit/New Riders (“Voices That Matter”) and A Book Apart.

Ethan Marcotte, co-author of Designing With Web Standards 3rd Edition and I will determine the winners.

Enter as many haikus as you like. Sorry, only one winning entry per person. Now get out there and haiku your heart out!

See you on Blue Beanie Day.

P.S. An ePub version of Designing With Web Standards 3rd Edition is coming soon to a virtual bookstore near you. Watch this space.

Categories
Apple twitter

Follow Me

A young girl saw an 11" MacBook Air. "Look, Daddy, it must be an iPad for old people, because it has a keyboard."

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Design Information architecture interface twitter Usability User Experience UX

“Similar to You”

IN THE TRADITION of “People who bought ‘Assmasters’ also bought ‘Assmasters II,'” Twitter has chosen four of my Twitter friends and is presenting them to me as being “Similar to You.” Pray what does this odd-in-this-context phrase, with its “Related Products” vibe, mean? Does it mean if I like myself, I would also like these people? Surely not, for I already know that, as demonstrated by the fact that I follow them. Were they chosen for discussing similar subjects (e.g. design, web design, CSS, semantic markup)? Unlikely, as that would imply Google-like keyword data mining and analysis bordering on artificial intelligence.

Then, what? It can’t mean people whose tweets resemble mine, as the Twitter writing style and frequency of the listed friends is purely their own. People with whom I have followers in common? That seems most likely, but it’s just a guess.

I’m curious to know what Twitter and its new CEO (hi, Dick!) mean by this. What is the marketing purpose of this feature? Am I to view Twitter as an informal “personal brand analysis” service? That could be cool for me and for the four people who are “Similar” to me. But surely most users would be uninterested in such a service, unless, unbeknownst to me, nearly everyone who uses Twitter is a marketer who views it primarily as a channel. And most companies don’t spend money developing long-tail features, of interest only to a tiny fraction of their users.

I love Twitter. I wish I’d invented it, and not primarily because if I’d invented it I’d be taking the Japanese women’s gymnastics team on a round-the-world cruise. I wish I’d invented it because it is something really new on the internet, like the web, and filled with potential, like the web. As a designer, I pay attention to Twitter same as I do Apple, Google, Flickr, and Facebook. The new feature intrigues me precisely because its language feels “off” and its purpose eludes me.

Also of interest, although less so: what data is being used, and how is it being analyzed?

What’s your theory?

Categories
Microblogging Micropublishing twitter

Thanks for sharing

i’m UNfollowing you on twitter — here’s why

LOVE your stuff!!!

however, your twitter posts have taken over my twitter stream: a good 30% of my stream is YOUR stuff. so i’ve decided to UNfollow you, sorry.

thought: you could write a script of some sort to set up a Zeldman LITE twitter account, with (only) 1-4 posts/day. or you could post em yourself, manually.

or not.

i’ll keep reading your site, regardless. thanks for reading.

Categories
Existence experience glamorous twitter Unconscious war, peace, and justice Zeldman

Like a prayer

An essay in three tweets:

Morality isn’t how you think, it’s what you do about your violent carnal greedy cowardly natural impulses. #

Good religion attempts to explain our deep connection to others. Bad religion scares us out of being monkeys. #

God loves my sin more than it shames me. Ladies. #

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