"What we need to do to design is to look at the extremes. The middle will take care of itself."
—Dan Formosa, from the documentary "Objectified"

When Twitter introduced features to address their retention problems with new users, they failed to address how these features would affect their more active, passionate users. The design of Twitter's Retweet and Lists features seem to have been driven as a response to counteract their high churn rate with nearly 60% of people on Twitter abandoning the service after a month. Unfortunately, the design of these Twitter features only sought to the fix the problem for new users and neglected to address the problems for the service's passionate, as well as their regular, active users—roughly 10% who generate more than 90% of Twitter's content. (Joshua Porter defines passionate users as those who have an emotional attachment to the product and often evangelize and build community around the product or service.)

Anil Dash recently criticized the ineffectiveness of the Suggested User Lists and reported that "being on Twitter's suggested user list makes no appreciable difference in the amount of retweets, replies, or clicks that I get". Many Twitter users, including myself, also prefer the former convention for retweeting, not because it was without problems, but because it allowed users to add commentary, provide attribution and, to some extent, trace a tweet's history.

As seemingly trivial as these things may seem, inviting users to contribute even small retweet comments and giving credit to those who contributed are critical elements that encourage more thoughtful participation and give a more a satisfying sense of a user's individual input and reputation within the larger network.

Just Add an Egg

Consider the story of Betty Crocker's cake mixes:

"The company was still refining their approach to marketing. While they sought to promote a quick and easy product that still retained a "fresh, 'home-made'" quality, 'the market was slow to mature' (p. 168). The company called upon the market research of Dr. Burleigh Gardner and Dr. Ernet Dichter, both business psychologists:

'The problem, according to psychologists, was eggs. Dichter, in particular, believed that powdered eggs, often used in cake mixes, should be left out, so women could add a few fresh eggs into the batter, giving them a sense of creative contribution.'
As a result, General Mills (who own Betty Crocker) altered their product, abandoning the powdered egg in their mixes. The requirement to add eggs at home was marketed as a benefit, conferring the quality of 'home-made' authenticity upon the box cake mix. (Whether using fresh eggs instead of powdered eggs actually enhanced taste was beside the point.)"

Although the fresh egg made the entire cake-making process less convenient and efficient, psychologically, it offered a greater sense of satisfaction and real accomplishment when fulfilling the role of baker or homemaker. When the retweet function was oversimplified into a mindless, one-click step, it likewise took away the sense of adding meaningful contribution and the satisfaction of becoming a co-creator.

When Twitter introduced their new features focused on new users, the oversimplified design unfortunately degraded the user experience for their more active, experienced users. Problems often have more than just one side, or one set of users to consider. By focusing myopically on one extreme set of users, the solution may likely break for the other set of users.