Twitter cofounder Evan Williams says in a Re|code interview that, in retrospect, showing how many followers you have on the social network was not “healthy,” nor was the Suggested Followers list, both of which “put in your face that the game was popularity.”
I speak from experience: when I opened my Twitter account in 2007 and discussed the social network on my web page in Spanish, I soon found myself with up to 10,000 followers. But it was Twitter’s decision, when launched its Spanish version, to put my account on the Suggested Users list, which saw the number of people following me soar to close to 100,000, creating a dynamic closer to that of a celebrity than a mere academic.
What would have happened if Twitter had decided not to show the number of people following me? Snapchat, which from its origins refused to provide this information to its users, offers some lessons. Does Snapchat have a different dynamic to Twitter in this regard? In February, Snapchat decided to start giving people it considered influencers this type of information in order to give them access to better advertising contracts, while keeping it from users in their profiles, although it is possible to access approximate metrics. Does its failure to offer these metrics make users see the social network as a form of communication rather than a popularity contest?
It may be that this is simply a question of human nature. But Snapchat’s approach suggests that if social networks choose to play down popularity metrics they can avoid the problems Twitter has encountered. That said, Twitter had little choice but to do otherwise when it saw how the presence of celebrities drove growth. Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Ev Williams or the race between Ashton Kutcher and CNN to reach one million followers led the company to convert the number of followers into a fundamental element of users’ profiles, making it the arbiter of success, the goal every user should want to achieve. By doing so, and by creating lists of suggested accounts new users could follow, the company managed to multiply its growth, but it also perhaps generated an unhealthy degree of competition, reinforcing a feature of human nature.
At the same time, much of Twitter’s negative dynamics comes not so much from popularity metrics, but from misunderstanding the concept of freedom of expression, which has seen it tolerate all types of bullying. This attitude of excessive tolerance and allowing people to open as many accounts as they want, as well as reopening accounts under another name that have been closed, provides few disincentives to aggressive behavior, as well as encouraging the creation of factories selling fake accounts to the highest bidder. Not that Twitter is alone in this: let’s not forget that the network that most clearly tries to commit itself to controlling the identity of its users, Facebook, is awash with countless false accounts used for all kinds of purposes.
Could Twitter’s problems have been avoided simply by not showing the number of followers users have? In the final analysis, probably not, because much of negativity of Twitter comes from a combination of factors that possibly includes popularity metrics, but also include a misinterpretation of tolerance and the refusal to link accounts with the real identity of the users. But above all, the issue comes down to something as unavoidable as human nature, a factor that cannot be eliminated from the equation and that must be considered very carefully by anyone who develops social tools, and that at best can be kept under control by other variables.
