The official Twitter app was recently updated with some significant changes. Among other new features, Twitter decided to add the “Quick Bar” to the top of the timeline.
Twitter had good intentions with the Quick Bar; it was designed to help users keep a better tab on trending topics. As topics trend, they push through the Quick Bar. Tapping a topic will activate the search window for that related hashtag.
People didn’t like Twitter’s new Quick Bar. And an internet backlash on what was cleverly coined the “Dick Bar” has caused Twitter to push another update that attempts at making the Quick Bar less intrusive.
In Twitter 3.3.1, the Quick Bar remains fixed at the top of the tweet timeline. The main problem with the Quick Bar in the previous version of the Twitter app was that it stayed fixed at the top of the app’s window no matter where you scrolled. Even worse, there was (and still isn’t) any way to turn it off.
Twitter has obviously implemented the Quick Bar as a business strategy. They have to make money somehow. An (what they think to be) unobtrusive bar that displays promoted tweets and trending topics seems to be a logical business move.
Even though the Quick Bar is now fixed to the top of the timeline, you still can’t turn it off in the app’s settings. Twitter is sticking firm to their love of the Quick Bar, and it probably won’t be going anywhere soon.
The good news is that, if you jailbreak, you don’t have to deal with the Quick Bar at all.
Jailbreak developer chpwn released a tweak that removed the Quick Bar less than two hours after Twitter released the app update. Twizzler is a free download in Cydia.
If you haven’t updated to Twitter 3.3.1, hold off on doing so if you want Twizzler to work. It hasn’t been confirmed that the tweak still works with Twitter’s latest update. (I get whitespace where the Quick Bar is supposed to be.)
Twitter hasn’t done that great of a job at monetizing it’s company as of yet, and its users have grown used to Twitter as a tool, not a service. So, when something obtrusive and uncontrollable by the user is introduced (like the Quick Bar), people get mad because they’re not used to being reminded that Twitter is totally free to use.
Some people have voiced that they’d be willing to pay Twitter to remove the Quick Bar, so maybe Twitter has a good business proposition in giving its customers the option to buy out of its future “enchancements.”
Would you be willing to pay to have the Quick Bar removed from the Twitter app? What if Twitter gave the option of a $0.99 in-app purchase?
Also, let us know if Twizzler works for you on the latest version of the official Twitter app.
[via MacStories]