I've been watching the Twitter TOSgate episode with interest over the last few days. For those of you who aren't familiar with the story (i.e. 99% of the world, and everyone who isn't a massive internet geek) the summary is as follows: A Twitter user posted on their blog about an issue they were having with another user repeatedly posting nasty things about them on Twitter. The user brought the issue to the Twitter gods, who reviewed the issue and decided they needed to take no action. Based on the Terms of Service that Twitter had posted at the time which clearly stated that users who "abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Twitter users" would not be tolerated, the original poster felt that Twitter was refusing to uphold their own TOS. She started a thread on GetSatisfaction to discuss the issue. The issue obviously sparked heavy interest in the community, because there were soon 119 participants and 283 replies, including two responses directly from Twitter staff. Shortly after, Twitter responded in their own blog to state their viewpoint.
This blog post isn't about the issue itself. This post, rather, is about Twitter's chosen response. If Twitter had just left the second GetSatisfaction post as their response, I wouldn't be writing this blog post. But they didn't. The same person who posted a constructive, thoughtful response on GetSatisfaction wrote a long, emotion-filled post on their blog. And what they said left me shaking my head.
Here's the first line of the blog post:
A discussion fueled by hearsay heated up this week when a popular blogger accused us of refusing to enforce our Terms of Service.
Not so warm and fuzzy. "A discussion fueled by hearsay". Immediately, Twitter places a judgment on the entire dialogue, on the original poster. They devalue the discussion, and the opinion of everyone who participated in it, by calling it "fueled by hearsay". They raise the temperature rather than trying to defuse the situation by using the word "accused".
The accusation is damaging to our reputation and the additional insinuation that we don't care about our users is offensive to us personally.
Twitter's response is to fight back.
Twitter is 16 employees made up of systems engineers and operators, product designers, and support specialists. We do not employ public relations professionals.
I'm not entirely certain what the point was of adding this line, particularly the "we do not employ public relations professionals". The only thing I can say to this is, maybe you should. More on that below.
This accusation caught us by surprise, putting us on the defensive in the middle of what continues to be a very busy work week.
And here's where I'm gonna be totally blunt and kinda sarcastic: Boo-hoo. Nobody cares. It's always a busy work week, for everyone. Shit always hits the fan at the most inconvenient times. It comes with the territory of running a company, and if you're not prepared to have things come out of left field in the middle of a random Friday afternoon while you're putting out 15 other fires, then you're in the wrong business.
The blog post goes on to tell "Twitter's Side" of the story, airing what they feel is the "real" account, and saying a few things about the "popular blogger" in the process. But here's the piece about the line I highlighted above that I find the most interesting: "Putting us on the defensive".
On the defensive.. against your users.
And there's where companies like Twitter get it wrong.
Twitter's response here was to believe that this was an "us vs. them" problem. They feel kicked, misunderstood. Their first response was to "set the record straight", to tell their whole side of the story just like Ariel had told her whole story about Twitter. And so the mudslinging begins, and animosity rises on both sides, and neither side resolves anything.
In my experience, this unfortunate sort of result is common when you deal with companies that are entirely developer centric. When you don't have someone within the company that straddles the viewpoint of the user and the developer; when you don't realize that your users are on your side just by virtue of using your product; when you don't realize that even negative feedback is golden, because it means your customers care about your product and want you to give them a good experience; when you don't get that customers are the best thing that can happen to you, and when you don't give them a voice within your company, then you will simply fail in dealing with those customers. And ultimately, you will probably fail as a company.
You know how our impression of ourselves vs other people's impression of us is always different? It's the same with companies. And that's what that "fluff" person, that marketing or PR person, can help a company manage. That person isn't just about spin and PR and press releases. That person is about having a critical eye on your company, who can tell you what the delta is between what you think you're doing, and what you're really doing. What you think you're saying, and what you're really saying.. or, what you want to say, and what you really should say. And that person can dance the fine line between telling people how it is, and not completely pissing them off.
The web 2.0 world has changed PR and Marketing, and in my opinion it's much for the better. Authenticity is valued far more over viewpoint and spin. We're getting the actual voices of the people who build the product, instead of the sanitized, buzzword-filled versions. But that doesn't mean that PR and Marketing are unnecessary. In fact, they're more necessary than ever, if only because people in these roles know how to get a message across without being a total douchebag about it.
Overall, this wasn't a shining moment in Twitter's history of customer relationships. And with the downtime and database and whatever other issues Twitter's been having lately, I'm sure tempers were short. So perhaps Twitter would do well to hire someone whose role isn't about saving databases from meltdowns, and who is truly about seeing the perspective of the customer instead of seeing customers as a pain.
Updated: TechCrunch has a great article on PR Secrets for Startups that the Twitter gang would do well to read.
5 things to say:
Hot damn, that was well said. I didn't even know of the debacle but this sure is a growing opportunity for Twitter. I hope they learn from it.
I've been following this as well and I couldn't agree more.
A company like twitter only has ONE worthwhile asset, their passionate user base.
How you respond to criticism is vital to maintaining your relationship with that user base.
PS. This is exactly why I was disappointed to hear that you had been laid off.
Nicely put and you're spot on.
They did turn it into an us against them situation. Even in their own blog entry they STILL look like they "don't care" putting "we care about our users" in their headline then going on to say what they did further made them look like they didn't care.
It will be interesting to see how it goes from here.. i don't even know its possible to turn this around as far as Twitter's reputation goes.
Great summary of the whole situation. What Twitter doesn't seem to understand is that their customers are already *extremely* patient with them, but that patience is going to reach a tipping point sooner or later. This could be it.
Mocha - a "growing opportunity" is a great way to put it!
Matt - yeah, this particular rant was about Twitter, but there are several other companies out there that would do well to modify their thinking.
Jenny - the interesting thing is, I'm sure the author doesn't realize how the tone of the post can be percieved as defensive and hostile. It'll take going back in a few weeks and re-reading before they realize how it came across. This is where a set of non-developer eyes would have come in very useful.
Average Jane - yes, I am really getting the sense that people's patience has worn thin with Twitter. Some of my favourite tweeters never tweet anymore, and have moved to other services. It's frustrating because I'm not crazy about getting reestablished on another service, to be honest. I'd rather move to something like SocialThing that aggregates everything for me. I like easy.
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