Dear Twitter,
I don’t want to yell. I don’t want to fight. We’ve already been down that road before and, well, I know that it affected our relationship and I don’t want to go through that again. It’s Friday and I’m having a really good week. I just want to talk, calmly, woman to woman. Is that okay?
Obviously, I’m obsessed with you. Let me just be honest about that from the very beginning. I’m also a few hundred tweets away from 40,000 so clearly I’ve been at this for a while. I’m probably what most people would call a “power user”, meaning I use your service a lot, not that I’m actually good at it. Either way, I enjoy your product and I enjoy other products that allow me to use your product better. But recently you broke one of those. In fact, you broke the one that you, coincidentally, happen to own. And that is why I’m writing you today.
My name is @LisaBarone and I need you to unbreak Twitter Search. And I need you to do it right now.
In case you think I’m being cute – I’m not. Whatever you did during your recent Twitter Search upgrade, please hit Ctrl+Z and undo it. Because New Twitter Search sucks. New Twitter Search sucks real bad.
What am I talking about? Well, I’m glad you asked. Because I actually have a list.
Finding Tweets Is More Complicated
As a rule, I’m not a fan of things getting unnecessarily more complicated. I’m a simple girl and I like simple things. I would think that this would be something you’d agree with me on. I mean, Twitter is pretty much based on the “simplicity” concept, no? But your upgrade, however unintentional, has made things more difficult for users. And it’s because you’ve applied invisible filters that weren’t there before.
There have been numerous complaints from users that the new Twitter Search is “broken” because it no longer compiles ALL the tweets from a particular search or because it doesn’t dig deep enough into tweet history.
For example, here’s a tweet from Brett Tabke (@btabke). He owns a conference called PubCon and is kind of a big deal.
Here’s another one from @erniehalter:
That’s how users are feeling. To your credit (maybe?), search isn’t broken; it’s just that you’ve changed it and added the number of steps users need to take to get what they want. It used to be that doing a Twitter Search would bring up ALL the results for that query. And that made sense. But it doesn’t work that way anymore. Now, by default, users will only see the Top tweets coming from established users. You did this to combat spam, but it also means that we’re not seeing the TRUE results unless we select All Tweets from the drop-down. That’s an extra step. And for some, it’s an extra step they don’t even realize they’re supposed to take.
Maybe filtering can be an opt-in step, not an opt-out step? I think that would be less confusing and less complicated.
I’d like my RSS Feeds back
Do you know what I loved about Twitter Search? And I mean loved? It was that I could subscribe to an RSS feed to track terms I was interested in. I don’t use a lot of 3rd-party tools so I really appreciated the simplicity of this and how easy it was to build monitoring Twitter into my daily routine. However, with the new upgrade, I can no longer do that. I can no longer subscribe to an RSS feed for my searches. Instead, you’re forcing me to use Saved Searches. And while I get that and it’s your right to do that – you’re again making things more complicated for me. I don’t like it. I just wanted to throw that out there. I’d really like my RSS feeds back. RSS feeds were a big part of how I used Twitter Search. If they’re gone, then I don’t really need to use you at all. Especially when Google puts real-time back in its SERPs.
So…please?
Advanced Search doesn’t work Didn’t Work For ~2 Weeks
So up until this morning, clicking the big blue button below did absolutely nothing.
Like, crickets. I just stayed there.
For nearly TWO WEEKS!
Luckily, I re-tested it this morning and it finally appears to be functional. So, I guess thanks for that? But…two weeks to make a button work? Really?
The trouble with the Search upgrade isn’t really the lack of RSS feeds or the added drop-down menus, its that you’re making easy things more complicated with no benefit to the user. And that’s a problem. It causes confusion, frustration, and wandering eyes.
I’m just asking you to understand how your users were using this product and then give us back the functionality and the ease that we loved. Because it feels like this upgrade has missed the boat a little. And I know I’m not alone in this thinking.
We loved Twitter Search, even if it was always a little wonky. Please give it back to us. If you want to fix something — fix its reliability, make it go back even farther, etc. Because even though you’ve been the Big Dog in social for the past few years, Google is coming for you. And you’re gonna need us. Now’s not the time to be burning loyalty with brand advocates. Now’s the time to show us what we’d be missing if we left you for that other guy. This is the time to rally the troops.
Just something to think about.
– @LisaBarone
*True story. Earlier this week during lunch the ladies had a rousing discussion about which social networks/search engines were male or female. It was decided that Google is a dude, Facebook is a girl and that Twitter was also female.
