Twitter Removes Controversial "QuickBar" From iPhone App

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If you use the official Twitter app on the iPhone, you’re probably well aware of what is officially called the “QuickBar”, but very soon became to be derisively known as the “#DickBar” after Twitter CEO Costolo. It was a bar that would slide down from the top of the app and flash the various Promoted Tweets. After much user backlash and mocking, though, Twitter has announced that they have removed the DickBar from the iPhone app.

Doug Bowman, Twitter’s Creative Director, writing on the Twitter blog, writes:

After testing a feature and evaluating its merits, if we learn it doesn’t improve the user experience or serve our mission, we’ll remove that feature. Rather than continue to make changes to the QuickBar as it exists, we removed the bar from the update appearing in the App Store today.

But, Twitter isn’t acknowledging the DickBar’s universal unpopularity. Instead, Bowman mentions the bar’s ”incredibly high usage metrics“.

The DickBar was another small step for Twitter towards earning a steady revenue stream. The extremely popular social network service has been trying, like everybody, to make money. It looks like the DickBar is gone for now, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see some sort of interstitial ad return to Twitter in the future.

Twitter seems to insist that the DickBar was actually about “discovery” outside the “home timeline” and Bowman writes that there are “significant benefits to increasing awareness of what’s happening outside the home timeline.” It’s worth noting here that the DickBar only appeared in the iPhone version of the official Twitter app. You could argue that lends credence to the idea that the bar was just being tested by Twitter.

Anyway, the controversial DickBar is gone. iPhone users, are you happy? Tell us about it in the comments section?