【】

It was supposed to be fun.

It was supposed to be an "experiment."

Instead, it was a stinking mess.

Last week, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey proposed that ReCode's Kara Swisher interview him entirely over Twitter. The unlikely pair carried out the plan Tuesday.

Dorsey positioned the idea as a novel test of Twitter's conversational features, which was odd to anyone who has ever held any sort of Q&A over Twitter. That's, well, a lotof people. Whywould the CEO need to test this out in so public a fashion?

Tweet may have been deleted

But it turned out that Dorsey was right. The Q&A was an experiment, in that it proved a point: following a one-on-one conversation on Twitter is damn near impossible.

Tweet may have been deleted

While the live tweet Q&A didn't shed much new light on Twitter's operations as a company, it did show that Twitter's threading feature is in dire need of repair.

Tweet may have been deleted

There were problems from the very beginning. Swisher failed to thread her first tweets, which left people wondering where Jack's response was.

Then, sub-threads kept getting created for some reason, where some replies would show up in a master thread, and others wouldn't.

Another problem was that Swisher kept accidentally tagging people in her tweets, therefore adding them to the thread. Most notably, she added Mark Zuckerberg. And then, in an attempt to remedy things, she added her friend — who texted her to tell her the thread was a "chaotic hellpit."

Tweet may have been deleted

Jack, tech maven that he is, took the experience as a ~learning opportunity~. This was proof for him that he needed Twitter to be... better at threading!

Tweet may have been deleted

The conversation between Swisher and Dorsey continued, but all the talk about the incomprehensibility of the conversation dominated.

Tweet may have been deleted

At CES in January, Twitter announced that it was testing features like status updates to promote conversation. The initiative is part of Twitter's larger campaign to both define and promote "conversational health" on the platform. But the Twitter Q&A made Jack's followers doubt whether this was possible at all.

Tweet may have been deleted

Tweet may have been deleted

Then again, perhaps the chaos of Twitter is what makes it, well, Twitter.

Tweet may have been deleted

Swisher wrapped up the interview with the conclusion that "analog talking seems to be a better way of asking questions and giving answers." Jack agreed — but he's still up for a challenge.

Tweet may have been deleted

Experiment with that, Jack!

最新评论