Welcome to Colonnade & Entablature, a new weekly newsletter that seeks to understand the processes that are changing and molding how we experience the world(s) that we share, together. Last week I published an introduction to the newsletter and its focus areas, and today is the inaugural issue with the standard format (column, links & endorsement). Please enjoy, and I’d welcome any feedback or suggestions via email: colonnadeandentablature@gmail.com
COLUMN
Back in May Twitter began testing a new Conversation Settings feature that was designed to give users more control over who can reply to their tweets. The test was apparently successful, and the product has now been rolled out to all users globally. Although the feature was designed primarily as a guard against abusive behavior, lately I have noticed another way it has been put into use: to block comments on Promoted Tweets in Twitter ads.
Long an outlier among social networks, Twitter has previously not supported Promoted Tweets being posted without the ability for users to comment (with some exceptions over the years). With the introduction of Conversation Settings, advertisers can now simply select ‘People you follow’ or ‘Only people you mention’ as approved to respond while composing a tweet. As long as the advertiser follows few (or no) users, or don’t tag any user in the tweet, there is no ability for users to post a reply that appears beneath the tweet.
Notably, Retweets with Comment are still permitted, so it is not quite accurate that no response is possible (users can also screencap the tweet and post their own tweet tagging the advertiser). Still, this new feature represents a significant change from Twitter’s traditional model of public discourse. Also worth mentioning is another new-ish feature from Twitter that allows users to hide individual replies to their tweets, however this triggers a disclosure within the app that alerts users that replies have been hidden.
The new Conversation Settings feature brings Twitter in-line with ad products on platforms like Instagram and Reddit, which permit advertisers to limit or forbid comments on their ads. But why would an advertiser choose to eliminate the possibility of consumer interaction in a social media ad?
One of the earlier exceptions I linked to above references pharmaceutical advertising as a beneficiary of Twitter’s deprecated Ads Without Profiles feature, likely as a consequence of the duty for drug makers to log and submit adverse events and off-label usage reports to the FDA. There may also be pressures to reduce community management and customer service costs through Twitter, a traditional strength of the social network stretching back to the early days of #custserv and the likes of @ComcastCares.
Another reason to turn off comments may be an attempt to limit negative comments on messages that are likely to be perceived as controversial. Last month I noticed that the tire manufacturer Goodyear used the Conversation Settings feature to limit replies to a post it made responding to a call to boycott the company led by US President Donald Trump (see the ‘Who can reply’ box at the bottom of the tweet):
Twitter has long been an important communication channel for companies and individuals during crisis response, and corporate communications leaders have often inquired about the possibility of limiting replies for fear of the negative response they expect to receive. Now, with Conversation Settings, this is possible … but it may ultimately provoke more backlash than a standard post that allows comments.
Looking at the Goodyear post today, while it has 0 replies, there are over 12,000 Retweets with Comment and a quick sample of those posts contain heavily negative sentiment - including specifically about the decision to limit replies to Goodyear’s tweet. It’s not immediately apparent that limiting replies in this case achieved the goal that Goodyear was aiming for and, partially due to the novelty of using the Conversation Settings feature, may actually have drawn additional attention rather than prevent it.
Conversation Settings is still a new feature, and the user behavior around it has not yet settled. It may ultimately become a powerful and beneficial tool in preventing or limiting abuse, including of corporate brands. Still, while there may be valid reasons for advertisers to limit replies, and while the quality of most comments in response to ads on Twitter may low, it still seems notable that Twitter - which once put a stake in the ground as the ‘free speech wing of the free speech party’ and urged that ‘the tweets must flow’ - is now providing tools to permit the stifling of sponsored conversation.
LINKS
In this section I will provide a handful of links related to our key pillar topics, along with a brief summary or comment on the item’s significance.
Emerging Media
The ‘metaverse’, a concept inspired by science fiction novels like Neuromancer and Snowcrash, envisions a new virtual space for life complete with economic activity, entertainment and social interaction. After a number of one-off music and entertainment events in the game Fortnite, Epic Games has announced a live concert series that will take place in the non-competitive ‘Party Royale’ island within the game. (Epic Games)
Facebook, Dolby and Garmin are among the organizations that have joined the Voice Interoperability Initiative, a program spearheaded by Amazon that seeks to create a framework for multiple voice agents (think Alexa and the like) to be able to operate on a single device like an Amazon Dot or Facebook Portal. (Amazon)
Social
TikTok has provided a look under the hood of its For You algorithm at a new ‘transparency center’ in Los Angeles, and we learned that, similar to many other recommendation engines, it functions by optimizing for videos that users are most likely to engage with based on their prior behavior and the preferences of ‘look-alike’ peers. This is the same algorithm that TikTok’s owner, China-based ByteDance, declared over the weekend it would not transfer in a sale to an American owner. (Axios, South China Morning Post)
Influence
Gaming and esports are growing businesses with increasing influence on culture and consumer behavior. It’s a topic that we will regularly cover in this newsletter, and it is again gaining a new wave of new coverage in the mainstream media as publications like the Washington Post, Bloomberg and Wired announce new content verticals focused on the topic. (CNN Business)
The Guardian newspaper published an op-ed written by GPT-3, an AI-driven language model. The AI was given a prompt asking it to explain “why humans have nothing to fear from AI.” (The Guardian)
Platforms
American GPU manufacturer NVIDIA announced its intention to acquire the UK-based semiconductor design firm Arm from SoftBank for $40bn in a bid to create a new powerhouse chip maker that may eclipse competitors like Intel and Qualcomm in the growing fields of AI and the Internet-of-Things. (NVIDIA)
Taboola and Outbrain, two content recommendation services known for the array of ‘related stories’ and ‘around the web’ ad units often found at the bottom of online news articles, called off their planned merger citing an inability to renegotiate aspects of the deal following the financial disruption of Covid-19. (Digiday)
ENDORSEMENT
In this section I share an endorsement for a cultural object (website, podcast, book, etc.) that I appreciate, together with a quick explanation of what it is and why you should care. Endorsements are never sponsored.
Techmeme is an essential read for anybody interested in technology, the platform economy, new startups, and the increasingly important role that these play in our contemporary life. It’s typically the first webpage I scan in the morning to catch up on the latest news and analysis from sources spanning the Wall Street Journal and tech blog the Verge, to an individual software engineer’s blog post that is driving conversation among the tech community.
Also, don’t miss out on the editorially-selected tweets that accompany most stories and provide additional commentary from industry observers and insiders, which help you get a fuller view of the reaction to news. You can even view the top contributors and top publications leaderboards to help understand who the key voices are in a particular subject or industry, based on their frequency of having their reporting featured on Techmeme.
Run by Gabe Rivera and now in its 15th year of algorithmically identifying and sorting the biggest tech news of the day, I recommend Techmeme (as well as sister sites MediaGazer for media news and Memeorandum for American political news) to those who want to be clued in to trends and discussions related to tech.