Ashton Kutcher, one of the original high-profile Twitter users, says Twitter has been ruined in part by “media companies” who started “pitching crap.”
It’s also been screwed up, he said, by Twitter itself.
“I think retweeting hurt Twitter the most,” Kutcher told a wireless conference Thursday in Las Vegas, according to CNBC. “It created a ton of noise in the system that took away from some of the value.”
Dude. What the heck is he talking about???
Twitter shouldn’t have instituted the RT button and the media ruined the overall experience? Really? Since when?
Kutcher of all people should know Twitter is what you make it. You follow the people you want to follow and unfollow the ones you don’t.
If someone’s feed becomes too commercial, stop following that person. Likewise, if someone RTs too often, press unfollow. And if you don’t want to offend the person by completely bailing, use an app like Tweetbot, which can mute people for a given amount of time (I do this often).
Other than that, I don’t understand where he’s coming from.
Oh, wait a second. Could it be that Kutcher screwed up the Twitter experience for himself?
In October 2011, he tweeted this in the height of the Penn State child sex abuse allegations:
How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste
Um…
The ensuing backlash caused him to not only backtrack and apologize, but decide to “stop tweeting until I find a way to properly manage this feed.” Now he uses a management team to control “the quality of (the feed’s) content,” ostensibly because he doesn’t trust himself to not tweet things that would seem to appear unsympathetic to molested children.
Seriously, though, is it really that hard? We all say things we regret, but it’s fairly easy to apologize and move on. People’s memories aren’t that long.
Anyway, it’s no wonder Kutcher now says: “Twitter’s experience has changed for me pretty drastically. It used to be sort of a personalized experience for me, a really personal experience that I could share.”
Geez, maybe it’s because he has a management team approving his tweets now? I’m not sure, but I think that could be it.
I’ve been on Twitter for more than four years and, for the most part, I think it’s only gotten better. Sure, everyone has to deal with the occasional troll, annoying requests for RTs (“It’s my birthday!”) and some over-commercialized tweets. But I certainly don’t think it’s a sign Twitter is losing what made it special.
The point is this: Ashton, please don’t go crap on Twitter just because your personal experience has changed. That doesn’t mean it’s like that for everyone, and most of us still enjoy it quite a bit.