Twitter Removes Quick Bar From Iphone App

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Ding dong the bar is dead! (I know, clever isn't it?) You iPhone users will be more than pleased to know that just a mere 3 days after Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey re-enters the picture at Twitter the Quick Bar , more commonly known as the Dickbar named after CEO Dick Costolo who implemented the Quick Bar as a way to generate advertising revenue for Twitter by inserting promoting trends to be visible to iPhone Twitter users, has now been laid to rest.

Let me just start by saying that I do see where Dick was going with this. I'm almost sure that when this idea was scribble on the dry erase board during the new ideas board meeting the entire Twitter staff rejoiced as if they'd found the advertising savior. These unsuspecting people had no way of knowing that importing this feature into iPhone's Twitter app would have iPhone users digging to find and inkling of self-control just to avoid sending their defenseless iPhone's flying out of windows when advertising trending topics came popping up on their timelines. Really, Dick had no way of knowing.

Dick likely thought that this Quick Bar would be placed quietly ...
... into your tweet stream where it would be noticed enough to take heed to but also discreet enough not to cause a ruckus. Needless to say, Dick, you were wrong this time. Do I believe that you deserve for the Quick Bar to be nicknamed with a derogatory connotation of your name? No, I don't feel like you deserve this at all. In fact, I feel like you deserve a pat on the back topped with an A for effort. You tried, Dick, but I do believe that it's time for you to go back to the drawing board (literally).

The people spoke, and Twitter (or maybe it was just Jack Dorsey) decided to listen. After nearly a full month of annoying and intrusive operation, Quick Bar has been axed. The not-so-rave reviews offered by the iPhone community leaves Twitter with the dilemma of figuring out what to do in terms of generating more advertising revenue in the months to come. Revenue generation has been a huge question mark over the heads of Twitter execs since the beginning and it seems the question still lingers. How to make money without making users angry?

According to a recent Twitter blog post Rather than continue to make changes to the Quick Bar 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 Quick Bar support this. For now, we're going back to the drawing board to explore the best possible experience for in-app notification and discovery.

If you ask me, the last line in that quote implies that there may be something similar to the Quick Bar (perhaps with a new name or even a more subliminal way to convey the same advertising messages) in the very near future. I wouldn't rejoice too loudly yet, iPhone users. I have the sneaking suspicion that we'll be revisiting a topic similar to this one in no time.