There’s a joke on Twitter about Twitter that goes like this: The biggest innovation the company achieved after spending more than $3 billion on research and development over the last five years was doubling the character count of a tweet. That characterization isn’t exactly fair, but there’s enough truth in it to make it funny.
In the face of such criticism, Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey early this year promised a different mentality. At the company’s analyst day in February, he vowed that Twitter would "double development velocity” of features to achieve its long-term financial goals. The message was clear: Twitter was on a new course, headed for rapid-fire innovation and game-changing product rollouts.
How is it going so far? The early returns are in, and it turns out that a lot of people are still using Twitter in much the same way they did five years ago. Unless the social-media platform fundamentally rethinks how it develops products, that may not change anytime soon.