"First, Twitter's UI changes have been big. They skip over incremental changes and go straight for gigantic overhauls. This requires people re-learn the languag

"First, Twitter's UI changes have been big. They skip over incremental changes and go straight for gigantic overhauls. This requires people re-learn the language of the site completely every couple of years." Honestly, I think that this is part of the point, at least with social media applications. When people get used to an application, and it works predictably, they have control over their use of it, and can fit it into their lives how they see fit. This isn't what social media companies want. Social media companies want users to spend as much time using their applications as possible which means setting up skinnerbox-esque mechanisms as much as possible which requires the application to at least be a little bit unpredictable. Replacing time based news feeds with unpredictable algorithmic ones is one way to do this, but any kind of change throws the user's sense of balance off. If the user doesn't quit right away (and most don't) they have the potential to become more dependent going forward.