14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter is known for its long roll-outs, but it seems that it's bent setting some new records. The new new Twitter, which it unveiled last year, has only now been rolled out to everyone, several months later.
While some people have had the redesigned Twitter since December, others only received it these last few days.
Taking it slow and playing it safe is great, especially for a site this big, but it seems that Twitter and Facebook in particular are taking this mantra to extremes.
Google does test all of its redesigns with actual users before rolling them out and may even include millions of people in the tests, but once it's ready to unveil something, everyone gets it in a manner of days. Not so with Twitter and Facebook, the Facebook Timeline, announced last September, is still rolling out.
"As of today, all users have been upgraded to the new version of Twitter," Twitter's Support account tweeted unceremoniously. Of course, the last few users to get the new Twitter probably noticed it in the last few days when it seems Twitter flipped another switch and finally included none.
There are good reasons for a slow roll-out. For one, things may go wrong, it's better to have it go wrong with 10 percent, 20 percent of the users than with all of them. More importantly though, if people don't like the changes, it's easier to manage a third of the user base than all of them.
What's more, people have an instant reaction to change and nine times out of 10, they don't like it. That's only natural, but some don't waste any time to start complaining. Give them a week and most of the critics will give up, either because they've found something else to direct their virtual fury at or they've grown to like the changes, understood the reasons behind them and discovered the subtler tweaks.