Dropped
iPhone-touting micro-blogging addicts everywhere will be rejoicing as Twitter has dropped its dreaded Quickbar.
It seems the ditching of the Quickbar, which inserted trending topics and pushed ads into an iPhone Twitter user's tweet-stream and was known affectionately as #Dickbar, was one of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's first actions after returning to work.
Returning as product chief, Dorsey reportedly said his main aim is to make it easier for people to navigate the service as well as better catering for users that want to get information from Twitter, instead of sharing their own views.
Maybe he considered that Quickbar was making iPhone users' Twitter lives more difficult, but whatever the reason, Twitter has announced it is ‘going back to the drawing board'.
A Twitter blog post said: "Rather than continue to make changes to the QuickBar as it exists, we removed the bar from the update appearing in the App Store today. We believe there are still significant benefits to increasing awareness of what's happening outside the home timeline. Evidence of the incredibly high usage metrics for the QuickBar support this. For now, we're going back to the drawing board to explore the best possible experience for in-app notification and discovery."
Business Insider has previously reported that the Quickbar had been developed by 2 junior product managers without a great deal of senior guidance. It would appear that Twitter realised it was not an amazing idea after the bar was launched as it quickly pinned it to the top of its iPhone app weeks ago and has now shelved it all together.
It admitted in the blog post that: "After testing a feature and evaluating its merits, if we learn it doesn't improve the user experience or serve our mission, we'll remove that feature."
What is interesting to note is that Twitter does not seem to have made a real decision about whether to prioritise user experience or money gained from advertising, although it seems that user experience has just about won for the time being.
Users can download the new Twitter app sans Quickbar from the App Store now.
