Twitter took a few lumps yesterday (and today) over its rollout of a web service, Blackbird Pie, which allows users to create embeddable tweets for blog posts and other web stories.  Things got so bad, in fact, that it caused one writer to question the fitness of Twitter’s CEO. 

Twitter quickly backpedaled on the Blackbird Pie feature and referred to at as an “experiment.”  One developer at Twitter even called the product a “toy.”  But something about all of the post-launch self-deprecation doesn’t ring true for me.  We were teased about the tool at least 24 hours before it was released.  There were several articles about an exciting new Twitter offering.  Twitter had to be aware of the small hype-bubble that was building around the release.  If Blackbird Pie was truly just a toy, then why not attempt to cushion against the impending pop of the bubble.  Better still, Twitter could have delayed the release to prevent the inevitable confusion when the reality of the product didn’t live up to the hype.

In addition to all of the rollout issues, Blackbird Pie suffers from a major bug.  I’ve tried to bring this problem to Twitter’s attention in three different forums, but it’s been several hours and the problem is still there.  Every single Blackbird Pie tweet is broken because the incorrect code is being used to display the Twitter profile pictures.

As an example, I posted the following embedded tweet to a blog.  Notice that the Twitter avatar is visible in the first tweet.  I then changed the profile picture for the Server Explorer Twitter account.  The image is now missing from the embedded tweet and a broken image placeholder is shown.  This problem will occur for every Blackbird Pie tweet whenever the author of the tweet decides to make a profile picture change. 

 

Is this really a big deal?  Well, it depends on how professional you like your posts to look.  I think missing images always reflect poorly on the writer and the story.  It would drive me nuts to know that my product had a bug like this.  I can’t believe it has gone unfixed for this long.

I think experimentation is important and most of my products really are grand experiments, but look at the media coverage that led up to this release.  Media.Twitter.com is supposed to guide the media and provide useful information.  Twitter could go a long way by attempting to provide real information ahead of a release.  They just might prevent the media from writing about a “toy” as if it were an amazing new feature.