Twitter in the eye of storm

One has to admit that it is a bit ironic for a social media platform to be attacked, bashed and hashtaged on its very own timeline, but hey, this is the universe of Twitter, or Twitterverse as some would like to call it.

Over the news reported by Buzzfeed that Twitter is testing a new approach to display its timeline, annoyed users took it to the timeline itself and created the hashtag #RIPTwitter (rest in peace Twitter).
What Twitter seems to be thinking about is changing the real-time chronicle display of tweets on the public timeline to a one induced by algorithmic calculations, showing tweets based on what the system thinks the user wants to see. According to some reports, Twitter has been testing this new approach randomly on few user accounts since November. The initial response that surfaced over the Internet is that users are simply annoyed by it. For most of them, it is simply changing Twitter timeline into a Facebook newsfeed.
“Dear Twitter, don’t try to be like Facebook, we don’t like Facebook #RIPTwitter,” tweeted @dearcalumthood on Saturday, while @EldestDamon wrote “Clearly the motto ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ is something @twitter isn’t familiar with #RIPTwitter.”
However, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey took to his personal account on Sunday afternoon to directly address the #RIPTwitter controversy. “Hello Twitter! Regarding #RIPTwitter: I want you all to know we’re always listening. We never planned to reorder timelines next week,” Dorsey tweeted after noticing that the hashtag #RIPTwitter had spent the morning as the top trending hashtag among users in the United States as well as leading in other countries as reported by Deadline web Magazine.
“Twitter is live. Twitter is real-time. Twitter is about who & what you follow,” he added. “And Twitter is here to stay! By becoming more Twitter-y.”
The bottom line is that Twitter gives you the feeling that in order to keep its position safe in the world of different social media platforms that are competing for its fan base, it is willing to haphazardly test new features and roll out new services without getting any feedback from its customers. It is not long since the move from “favorites” to “likes” made the same buzz, followed by rumors that it is planning to drop its 140 characters limit.
“The common denominator here? Twitter continues to make changes to its interface that seemingly no one has asked for. While the report says that Twitter had previously tested the algorithm with “a small group of users,” and that “it appears the test went well enough to roll it out more broadly,” the general consensus among the majority of Twitter users doesn’t appear to be that positive,” reported Carly Lane on TheMarieSue.com.
Was it just a rumor that Twitter CEO just denied and put to rest? Or was it a plan that Twitter wanted to move along with but the strong reactions from its users took it by surprise? We can only wait and see.