Sports business analyst Darren Rovell seemingly is unhappy with an new experimental feature that Twitter might utilize, which he felt had an impact on the what makes the social network tick.
An NBC Report (which since has been revised), claimed Twitter was thinking of no longer displaying the number of likes and retweets a tweet gets. The Action Network HQ analyst took to Twitter on Wednesday to react to the idea, and called the apparent change an “asinine move.”
Twitter removing number counts on retweets and likes is an asisine move. Eliminates a lot of the energy that makes this platform go, the meritocracy it is from a content perspective and compromises the ability to pick out the value of what’s important in the moment.
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) March 13, 2019
But Rovell’s comments didn’t come without critics. It even led one Twitter employee to chime in on the situation.
Brandon Borrman, who works in communications for the social network, noted that not only was it an experiment, but that the metrics still were available for users to view.
Hey Darren, this isn't actually true. It's an experiment in a separate testing app, might never exist in the main app. One is making conversation easier to read by not having the metrics right there (they're still available, you just have to click to see them.)
— Brandon (@bborrman) March 13, 2019
In another tweet, Rovell criticized Twitter for the way they roll out new features on the social media platform. “Twitter’s most common problem in unveiling new features… is that its executives never seem to know what its users want,” he wrote.
Borrman responded to that tweet, too.
And this is exactly why we're EXPERIMENTING. We want to know what works/what doesn't. What people like/what they don't.
— Brandon (@bborrman) March 13, 2019
Rovell tried to have the last word in the debate, but it didn’t quite work.
Feedback is exactly what we're looking for.
— Brandon (@bborrman) March 13, 2019
Despite having a lot to say about the platform, Rovell is no stranger to criticism on Twitter. Back in February, for instance, the analyst was shredded for a tweet where he seemed more concerned about Nike’s stock when Duke’s Zion Williamson was injured.
For the time being, however, he has yet respond to Borrman’s latest tweet (although he has had plenty to tweet about since).
