So Justine Bateman, you know, Mallory Keaton from Family Ties, completely lost her cool this morning with a bunch of people on Twitter. She kept noticing people she doesn’t follow showing up in her tweet stream and proceeded to publicly call them all “shitheads.” Of course, what she doesn’t realize is that this really is a feature and not a bug. And it could spell some trouble for Twitter if they don’t handle it properly.
The issue is that Twitter apparently enabled Bateman’s account with the new retweet functionality. Obviously, she wasn’t made aware of it, and doesn’t seem to know what the feature actually is. Clearly, she doesn’t frequent TechCrunch or a number of other tech blogs who have been covering this upcoming change extensively, because if she did, she would know that with the new retweet changes, users will now see the original tweets that are being retweeted in their stream, rather than a person they follow retweeting it. This means that people who you don’t actually follow could show up in your stream, which is exactly what happened to Bateman.
Here’s what she wrote to Thing Labs (makers of Brizzly) founder Jason Shellen:
Mr. Shellen, I don’t know what kind of deal you cut with TwitterBerry or how much it cost you, but suddenly you’re on my Twitter feed and I NEVER OPTEN TO FOLLOW YOU nor do I wan to.
I’m set to flame this incident all over the Internet. I suggest for the sake of your reputation on-line, YOU GET YOUR TWITTER ACCOUNT TOGETHER, and stop attempting to shove your posts into other people’s feeds.
Sincerely, Justine Bateman
There have been plenty of other examples of her threatening other Twitter users who showed up in her feed too. Including blogger John Gruber and Twitter engineer Ryan King.
Setting aside the fact that it’s mildly hilarious that Bateman thinks that somehow users are to blame for this, and that she thinks her lame Internet threats will put an end to all of this, there is actually a potential issue here for Twitter.
When the new retweet functionality goes live, which should happen relatively soon, Twitter needs to make it very clear to all users that the change is happening, and what exactly it means. Otherwise, we could very well see a backlash similar to Bateman’s only on a massive scale.
As we’ve seen when Facebook rolls out changes to its site, users generally don’t like change, even if it’s for the better. The backlash that occurred immediately after Facebook rolled out their News Feed a few years ago is a perfect example of this. As is the backlash FriendFeed initially saw when it rolled out its real-time continuous updating system earlier this year. Both of those changes were for the better, and users eventually realized that, but initially they thought the company was ruining their experience.
I think Twitter’s new retweet functionality is in the same boat. It seems like it will ultimately be a positive change for the service, but plenty of users are sure to hate it at first. There’s not much Twitter can do about that other than explain what is happening very clearly and to say something along the lines of “try it out, give it a chance.” But if they drop the ball on the transition, potentially millions of users who have no idea about the change are going to wake up and think their Twitter accounts have been compromised by tweets of people they don’t follow.
If those users are thinking clearly (which Bateman clearly wasn’t), they’ll likely questions whether Twitter has sold them out and violated their privacy (which, of course, won’t be true, but that’s how it should look to those users not in the know). Or they’ll see it as another Twitter failure.
So in some ways, Twitter is lucky that Bateman seems to be a hotheaded user who doesn’t mind attacking people publicly on the Internet. She has given them a potential taste of what is to come. Twitter should look at her reaction and come up with a plan for how they’re going to explain this upcoming change to other confused users.
Dear Justine,
Turn the crazy down below eleven, plz.
Thanks,
The internets.
+1
+2
Seriously, what a fucking bitch.
Justine Bateman has a striking personality resemblance to Patrick Bateman of American Psycho acclaim.
Yeah. I had a -major- TV crush on her.
The eventual Oscar winning guitarist role in a major movie blockbuster just sealed the deal.
Word.
Can someone PLEASE GET KIRSTIE ALLEY ON THIS BETA LIST? The caps DO NOT MEAN im yelling BY THE WAY.
I second that motion.
Kind of touchy isn’t she…..kind of makes ya want to piss her off more just to see her head spin.
so basically people are copying what others are saying and tweeting it to their followers??
wow, twitter certainly sounds like a waste of time, and a good place for e-stalkers.
you don’t really know how the internet works, do you billy?
Yes I do, it’s a series of tubes. And those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material.
I actually wish I was psycho-tweeted by a crazed ex-Family Ties character. That would have been pretty cool… yeah.
I’ve been following the news and this still would have initially confused the hell out of me if they didn’t give some kind of heads up.
Also, you forgot to say ‘away’ again.
But would you have started flaming people about it?
you seem to imply that there was something else for her to do.
do you really think the average internet user considers the typical web2.0 company to have a real support channel? have you looked at twitter’s help page lately? it’s a morass of fail.
Probably not, but she probably has no idea who any of these people are. Probably just assumed they’re spammers, in which case the anger isn’t that surprising.
True, her anger would not be surprising is she assumes they are spammers, which would make me assume she has little knowledge of the social Web. But. Given her company FM78.tv is a production company that is trying to bring “top-notch professional content” to folk on the Internet you’d think that she should have more than just a clue about how new media works. Perhaps you should send her a TC t-shirt.
She’s not “touchy.” She’s a rebel! Didn’t you see Satisfaction?
It isn’t obvious enough that it is a RT. It doesn’t allow for commenting. For people who hated all @ replies, this will piss them off. for those of us who miss all @ replies being visible, this is not a great way to bring them back. I think it needs a LOT of fine tuning. I would love it if it worked like the 3rd party apps do it – button to click that quoted tweet/user name, added RT to front, and came from MY account, the RTer, to avoid confusion. It will certainly be interesting to watch.
Justine has a twitter account? What next Max Baer Jr. going to start up a Facebook page?
It’s not her that’s in the trial, it’s Shellman (probably), and Gruber (definitely) etc. When *they* retweet things it gets shown as being in the feed for certain clients.
This seems like a weird way to roll out the change, with it affecting the UI of people that aren’t testing and haven’t been shown the presumable intro materials the beta people have been, but…
Ahh, to be the center of the universe… “Clearly, she doesn’t frequent TechCrunch or a number of other tech blogs who have been covering this upcoming change extensively”
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the majority of the human race neither cares for or frequents technology sites.
I do think that anyone who has a lot of retweetable content is about to have their Twitter usability destroyed. As an example, will the twitter user “@Techcrunch” be able to see anything on Twitter besides RT: @techcrunch articles after the change?
I think it’s smart enough to not display your own retweeted posts. It should only display posts that your followees have retweeted that are not already in your stream.
I’m pretty sure the whole point of the self-reference was to show how ludicrous it is for Twitter to release features that only people who hang out on techblogs will understand. Seems like lots of people who hang out on techblogs don’t really understand that, though..
Well, reading “paris lemon”:s other posts on the intarweb indicates that I was wrong. He probably thinks that he’s the center of the universe, despite having no influence on anything ever. A perfect match for TechCrunch, in other words.
But still what a dumb bitch to just send out flames. That takes class.
Almost as much class as it took for me to call her a dumb bitch
nerdy nosex
I think you’re completely wrong to blame Bateman on this. The average Twitter user does not read TC or keep up on “what’s new” and just uses the service. When people who they do not follow show up in their feed they are going to become confused. When they go to unfollow these people, only to find out that they are not following them to begin with, they will become angry, either with these users, with Twitter, or both.
Still to send nasty letters? Seems a bit much and I’m guessing people aren’t going to be very kind to her in return. Should have complained to Twitter or something instead of just going on the attack.
Bateman advertises herself as a “new media” expert. Wouldn’t that include twitter? I don’t think I’d call anyone who made such claims an average twitter user.
Oh noes someone was in her tweet stream! Time for a rampage. Rather than flying off the handle maybe she should have tried to figure out why first.
This is a big reason why companies let new features out slowly, to allow for the unexpected.
yes i was (somewhat) kidding with the TC comment. mostly i found it humorous that she blamed those users rather than assume it was something on twitter’s side.
She’s a drama queen…plain and simple. Remember how she acted when Nick broke up with her?
wow for a service that exists to simplify communication things have got real complex to understand.
I no longer even bother to read the twitter postings on any blogs. Its time for a new poster child for “web2.0″
The word “tweet” really needs to go away…..
You take the good, you take the bad, you take ‘em both and there you have…
oh wait. wrong show. But good advise.
blah blah blah…who cares what Justine Bateman had for lunch or anyone else for that matter?!? don’t ppl have better things to do?
go eat lunch yourself or play a video game or watch porn or something…
blah blah blah…who cares what slim has to say about a topic he doesn’t care about. doesn’t he have better things to do?
Please, *Please*, PLEASE let the new re-tweet thread monitoring cause the Myspace refugees to either go back to Myspace or sign-up over at Facebook.
Twitter could use a “thinning of the heard” to clean up what Aston and Oprah have done.
good luck with that one…it’s only getting bigger.
???
there are people on twitter that are NOT on fb or myspace?
Justine Bateman. Twitter retweet changes. Two things I have a hard time giving a crap about.
what about Jason Bateman? Patrick Bateman?
Make sure you don’t piss Patrick off.
He’ll do far worse than “flame this incident all over the Internet”.
Yeah, a whole lot of sites have gotten bad about making changes and not letting users know in advance. Its very sloppy to say the least and as you point out it could in cases harm their reputation.
That said, I rather like the idea of the new retweet feature.
i like the idea too, but it will be rough for them when it is first rolled out.
i’ll write it’s cool, everyone will say i’m wrong, twitter will backtrack slightly, then in 6 months those people that said i was wrong will say it’s cool. i’ve played this game before.
I hope they have a global hide retweet option. I waste too much time going through useless tweets as it is (today is sunny!; going to blah to eat blah…who cares?). The last thing i need is to see more space wasted in the stream. And if I start seeing posts (retweet or otherwise) from people who are not my friends (following or followed by) I’m going to drop twitter. Facebook has enough of that crap and I can barely keep up with the useless info there either,
Does someone have Justine Bateman’s Twitter account? We should start a hashtag campaign just to annoy her.
Justine is only famous b/c her dad was a producer.
And sadly poor Tina Yothers only has three followers on Twitter!
http://twitter.com/apples171
I understand why Miss. Bateman did what she did, she reacted because she thought they were “spamming” her with unsolicitated tweets. So, hear, hear justine. Way to go with sticking up for yourself.
Could not resist the meme.
http://i35.tiny...com/2zefi55.jpg
nice.
ditto
Justine Bateman has a bush the size of India
I think the new retweet feature is crap. Whenever I retweet someone, I typically make a comment about the tweet, to give my opinion or thoughts on it or whatever. I’m not planning to use the new format and hope all twitter apps allow people to use the old, preferred way.
Wait… you mean @ijustine WASN’T in Family Ties??
I really have no idea how twitter works, and I have a feeling I don’t want to know either. Maybe one of these days someone will come out with an open-source distributed version of twitter or something… then maybe users can have a more reasonable assurance of control over their data and privacy.
All this fuss over twitter… there will probably be a new and more interesting paradigm next week or next month that kills twitter off. I mean come on… Any high school kid can program a twitter. The only thing that Twitter the company did that’s special is that they scaled a centralized server approach up beyond the point of ridiculousness. And they still haven’t figured out how to make money off of it.
Suggestion – new motto for Twitter: “What would we do baby, without us?”
i like that.
who?
Ooh! Ooh! I have a better idea! How about not make the change at all! No one will be upset! Everyone will be happy! Yay Twitter!
I’d retweet her
Also, she is the older sister of affable Arrested Development star Jason Bateman. She deserves some respect.
We like the Kirstie Alley idea.
the very idea of people spamming comments back on your twitter page seems like the narcissists with rabid rabies have taken over the site.
does that mean i have to manually block everyone except those i want to follow ?
why even have separate accounts ?
why not just make it all one big list of never ending crap & all the losers can pretend they have 1 billion followers in a sea of chaos.
SO if I post a twit and it gets RT 1000 times, I will get 1000 tweets from people I dont know. Why the hell would I want that.??? I already know what I said. I need to see what people I am following are saying not what I am saying.
The issue as I understand it is if you get retweeted 1000 times, to the followers of those 1000 people it looks like you showed up randomly in their Twitter stream, even if they’re not following you. Those people may be annoyed by that and think you’re a spammer, and they may blame Twitter, or they may blame you.
So let me get this straight… she chose her Twitter profile pic?
It’s just like the photos TMZ and The Smoking Gun love to publish.
Because of the 2000 follow rule, a lot of people who understand the math of Twitter keep saying that everyone MUST follow each other back (or both parties ignore must each other). The Twitter feed really is not meant to be read without filters. It is best to have a separate account to get a clean feed of a relatively few people you want to read. But your main feed has to be where you follow everyone back who isn’t an obvious spammer.
I don’t know why the math isn’t obvious. Sure, @APlusk can get 3 Million newbies to follow him temporarily, but does anyone who follows 2000+ people follow him?
Of course not. You see..they cannot. So what does that mean to “advertisers” about the quality of a huge non-mutual following? Huge non-mutual followings consist mostly of newbies who will have to unfollow if they ever have the wherewithal to post good stuff themselves and grow their accounts.
Today I have to unfollow about 400 on one account who didn’t follow back…not out of spite but because they “Box Me In” by not following back. I could not follow anyone else without unfollowing the non-mutuals. It is not so much as they were directly rude for not following back…they probably didn’t understand the math and what “boxing in” means (I also believe smart companies like Pepsi recognize that it is considered directly rude not to follow back if you are actively posting tweets without checking and following those who thought your tweets were interesting).
There are only 200 people on this Earth who can be followed non-mutually by someone approaching the 2000 follow limit who wants his or her account to grow. I shouldn’t have to explain the math anymore.
The biggest #Twitterfail are people who think it is cool to follow a small enough stream like 100 while accumulating 7000 or 70000 followers themselves. They don’t realize that the smartest people and the up and comers are unfollowing them after 2 weeks or 1 month of waiting for a follow back…not just the spammers who tend to unfollow if you don’t follow back within 2 days.
The math simply does not support the theory that it is OK to just follow 100 while 10000 follow you. If you are not one of the top 200 most elite in your segment, you are going to be unfollowed by the best people if you do that.
If anything, take this advice: If someone RTs you, and it helps you to be RTd, then follow them. If you don’t, they are likely not to RT you again.
Finally…I get unfollowed once per day by someone cool whom I had not noticed when they followed me. They unfollow because they are growing their accounts. I always follow such people immediately after I realize the mistake (of course I use @mrunfollow). It would have been better for them to have RTd me in order to wake me up to the fact I should follow them or let them go grow their own following.
I think there’s something to be said for retaining the ability to control what’s in your stream. I certainly don’t want mine cluttered with stuff that maybe those I’m following think is important but I don’t. If people hate this enough, Twitter is going to have to provide an option to filter for re-tweets. That being said, there’s away to express this type of concern, and then there’s how Bateman has chosen to handle it. Tweet-rage!
Tink *~*~*
+1
In many ways, the developing Twitter culture is like what was described in “Animal Farm”. The Twitter priests proclaim “On Twitter everyone is equal but some of us are more equal than others so follow me and I won’t follow you back because I’m special and you’re boring”.
I guess it is human nature for elites to form that define themselves by the amount of one-sided adulation from below.