Twitter Lops Off the “Dickbar”

Should we be thanking Jack Dorsey? Just days after the Twitter creator’s return to the company, Twitter has announced that the infamous, ad- and trend-laden floaty bar atop the official Twitter iPhone app — the QuickBar to Twitter, the “Dickbar” to its enemies — has been killed off in the latest Twitter for iPhone update, rolled out for download today.

The disdain for the Dickbar (named for relatively new Twitter CEO Dick Costolo — what were you thinking?) was severe among techies. Marco Arment now-famously wrote that “It’s offensive because it’s deeply bad, showing complete disregard for quality, product design, and user respect, and we’ve come to expect a lot more from Twitter.” Though Twitter’s removal of the bar implicitly acknowledges the scorn (“After testing a feature and evaluating its merits, if we learn it doesn’t improve the user experience or serve our mission, we’ll remove that feature”), Twitter’s blog post announcing the change defended its efficacy:

Rather than continue to make changes to the QuickBar 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 QuickBar support this. For now, we’re going back to the drawing board to explore the best possible experience for in-app notification and discovery.

So: Score a victory for the vocal mobile Twitter users, at least for now. If the bar does make a comeback post-drawing board session, hopefully it will serve up relevant ads and trends rather than dumping the same ill-fitting stuff on every user.

(via Twitter Blog. title pic via BlackWeb)