There¡¯s a joke on Twitter about Twitter that goes like this: The biggest innovation the company achieved after spending more than $3 billion on research and development over the last five years was doubling the character count of a tweet. That characterization isn¡¯t exactly fair, but there¡¯s enough truth in it to make it funny.

In the face of such criticism, Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey early this year promised a different mentality. At the company¡¯s analyst day in February, he vowed that Twitter would ¡°double development velocity¡± of features to achieve its long-term financial goals. The message was clear: Twitter was on a new course, headed for rapid-fire innovation and game-changing product rollouts.

How is it going so far? The early returns are in, and it turns out that a lot of people are still using Twitter in much the same way they did five years ago. Unless the social-media platform fundamentally rethinks how it develops products, that may not change anytime soon.