Twitter Is Ditching the Egg (fastcodesign.com)

Long time reader and journalist harrymcc writes: In 2010, Twitter started representing new users with an icon of an egg. It was playful at the time, but the image has come to represent the worst of Twitter: trolls and bots. So the company is killing the egg. For Fast Company, I talked to Twitter's designers about their rationale for doing away with the well-known symbol, and the challenge of replacing it. From the article: The idea was that "eventually you'd crack out of an egg and become an amazing Twitter user," says senior manager of product design Bryan Haggerty, who worked on the project and recalls toying with the idea of even showing the hatching in progress. Nowadays, "the playfulness of Twitter is in the content our users are creating, versus how much the brand steps forward in the UI," says product designer Jen Cotton. Starting today, however, the egg is history. Twitter is dumping the tarnished icon for a new default profile picture -- a blobby silhouette of a person's head and shoulders, intentionally designed to represent a human without being concrete about gender, race, or any other characteristic. Everyone who's been an egg until now, whatever their rationale, will automatically switch over.

Comments

You can't burn through $2 Billion in losses

[JoeyRox]

Without breaking a few eggs.

Re:You can't burn through $2 Billion in losses

[alvinrod]

That's quite a staggering amount of money to lose. Are you implying that Twitter's got the egg on its face?

Re:Eh?

[DaHat]

By solving the rampant alektorophobia that exists on the site.

Receive a reply which you disagree with? Is the users icon an egg? Rather than respond with "I disagree because ____!", simply dismiss them as an egg to tout your moral superiority.

I think I read a book about this when I was a kid.

Excellent Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, this will surely solve the problem with trolls and bots. It was totally because of the egg icon! I'm glad they rooted out the problem. Now that this is fixed, I'm sure they will start making money any second now.

Re:Excellent Idea

[pseudofrog]

"Excellent Idea" instead of "Eggsellent Idea"?

For shame.

This is the BEST news I could have hoped for today

[gosand]

No wait, I mean - WTF? THIS is considered not only news, but news for nerds?

I will never understand branding and marketing

[redmid17]

But this concept: "The idea was that "eventually you'd crack out of an egg and become an amazing Twitter user," says senior manager of product design Bryan Haggerty, who worked on the project and recalls toying with the idea of even showing the hatching in progress."

I just lack the words to describe exactly how I can convey this in a way that expresses incredulity, confusion, and its state of being a sheer bad idea.

In other words...

[argStyopa]

...instead of actually dealing with the trolls and bots, we're going to stop identifying them clearly.

Time to acknowledge reality

[TheSouthernDandy]

Maybe they should just introduce a troll icon, and a bot icon, along with a rating system a la Slashdot. Once a user crosses a threshold on "Troll" or "Bot" ratings, their icon automatically gets changed to one or the other.

In fact, just create icons to go along with every rating category, and change their icon based on how a user is rated.

Actually, come to think of it, Slashdot IS hardened Twitter, without the popularity (or icons).

Human? What about the bots?

[lannocc]

Aren't half the Twitter users simply bots? That the new icon is a human silhouette sounds like wishful thinking to me. So does the silhouette fill in to become a robot once the user has demonstrated enough bot-like activity?