Twitter Kills The #Dickbar

Yes, it’s happened. Three days after Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey comes back in to head product, the dreaded #Dickbar, or the Quickbar that inserted trending topics and promoted ads into your tweet-stream on the iPhone, is dead.

Business Insider reported that the Dickbar was a mistake in the first place, having been developed by a junior product manager with no senior oversight. And this would make sense, considering Twitter backtracked after its launch, taking the step to pin it to the top of the app weeks ago and today deciding to do away with it altogether.

From the Twitter blog:

“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. We believe there are still significant benefits to increasing awareness of what’s happening outside the home timeline. Evidence of the incredibly high usage metrics for the QuickBar support this. For now, we’re going back to the drawing board to explore the best possible experience for in-app notification and discovery.”

While this move calls into question Twitter’s grasp on it overall monetization strategy (is it ads over user experience or user experience over ads?), for now users interested in shaking off their #Dickbars can download the new ad-free app from the App Store. And in case anyone misses it, you can replicate the experience here.