The problem isn't that they threw ads all over the place. It's how they did it. Ads and new features should be released to a few users--at least start with your own employees--and iterate until you get it right, if at all. It doesn't seem like they did this.
Their second biggest mistake was admitting that it was a mistake. You don't do that--well, unless it involved something serious, like a user's privacy (think Buzz and Beacon).
Eating your own dogfood is such 2001-dotcom-bubble thinking.
I have no problem with people/companies calling something a mistake where another would put PR fluff. At least it implies that your users/customers have legitimate standards other than "take it and like it."
And your first statement is so 2011? Associating an idea with a market crash doesn't refute anything, especially since that's not at the core of my point, and I will kindly refer you to the guys at Apple to prove that "eating your own dog food" can actually work, but keep in mind I am no implying that everyone can replicate Apple's success by merely doing this.
As to not admitting it was a mistake... I'm saying you don't apologize for the DickBar. It didn't work, learn something from it, and move on. But clearly, Twitter was far too short-sighted that they didn't even have a backup plan, or competing ideas as simple as... "what would happen if we instead moved the ads to the bottom?" AdMob already bombards many users this way. Would that work?
And as mentioned, I don't have a problem with companies apologizing if they royally screwed up--I mentioned two specific cases where it was warranted. But apologizing every time someone with a blog ridicules a feature/ad model? Not a good sign.
Absolutely. I was responding more to the "test on your own peoples" aspect of my parent, though on reflection I can see groupthink at a company allowing something like this to get past internal testing. "Dick says it's the next big thing." It's just too onerous not to notice. Like the dog that didn't bark, it's apparently the question that didn't get asked. It certainly couldn't have been 'the change that wasn't seen.'
I think we'd all like to think that people at Twitter are the cutting edge of whatever, Web Scale, but the people who work there are in a bubble of what they're told just as much as people at other companies. When you're in the middle of an industry it's hard to be objective, increasing the odds that something like this would be thought of as a good idea. So whatever, now Twitter's got their own Microsoft Bob. At least it's dead AFAICT.
Their second biggest mistake was admitting that it was a mistake. You don't do that--well, unless it involved something serious, like a user's privacy (think Buzz and Beacon).