The Ultimate Twitter
Twitter is broken, unstable, slow and is getting competition..
Ever since they had that major downtime in May I think, IM has been down, and ever since that day its there number one priority to get it back up. So why did the ‘track’ feature come back first then? and why did it go down again? I feel sorry for them, every fix they make makes Twitter more unstable, they often have to rollback code ‘fixes’ etc. the API is broken. There’s no API management, so if you use FF, twhirl or Socialthing etc it will count toward the API limit, now brought back to 20 connections an hour, the only way to manage it when you loose them all, is to change your password and change it on the services you want to update from your Twitter.
The replies tab goes down quiet often, Twitter is useless without the replies tab. You might as well take down twitter all together if that doesnt work. Pagination is the same, I often can’t scroll back and the limit is now set on 10 pages back, and no you can’t change the url it will bring you back to the index page. I am not going to keep checking twitter for timeline updates, if I can’t go back forget it. I’ll just go somewhere else, but where?
This is going to be a problem for Twitter, there are allot of alternatives, but the one that’s caught on the most is Plurk! Plurk is weird the first time you use it but it grows on to you, the time line is horizontal, and you can reply on Plurks in a thread. This is something I really like, and so do allot of people, not more @-ing (you can still do that btw) but replying in a thread, likes it’s a blog post, it’s more like a microblog instead of a messaging service. So while twitter is having problems, more and more people are moving over to Plurk and more and more people are discovering the joy of threaded Replies. So even when Twitter comes back, people won’t return they will miss the threaded replies. Really all Plurk needs is IM and an API. It will get some getting used to though.
So some will say, what the deal: Jaiku has done this forever. That is correct, but in my mind Jaiku is dead. It got sold to Google and they’ve closed Jaiku to invite only. Jaiku has threaded replies, but it also has a feature so you can import your lifeline, your RSS feeds. I don’t like that, It’s too much noise. Sure plugging your blogpost is ok, but I don’t need to know that youve just uploaded 30 million photos, with a Jaiku for every photo. Just manual post ONE Jaiku for every photo Batch you uploaded.
Very strong opinion @alex! However, even with Twitter breaking down every now and then, I am finding people twittering regardless.
I think people would not bother switching services. Twitter’s competitors are too different. Yes, it is their goal, but users can’t comprehend the switch.
Just an opinion.
Comment by Ben — July 7, 2008 @ 1:34 pm (524)
I see your point, however this is the first competitor where big people are switching to, for example, Molly Wood, Tom Merritt, Jason Howell, Leo Laporte who is Slowly switching, I’m seeing more and more people switching over. Jaiku was fun for a while (say a week) but after a month Plurk is still growing strong and so are the members. They have a Twitter search on Plurk so you can find your old Twitter friends on Plurk, and I was amazed at how many people had a Plurk account.
Comment by Alex — July 7, 2008 @ 2:17 pm (553)
Agree with most of the points in the post but Ben is also right. As much as I hate Twitter and vow to switch whenever it goes down I never find myself doing so. While I actually at first glance prefer the look of Plurk I just can’t get myself to use it as much as I Twitter, I’ll keep trying though. It may be that I just have to break old habits.
Comment by Adam — July 8, 2008 @ 6:16 pm (720)
Twitter should buy Plurk, reskin it to look exactly like Twitter, then introduce commenting as a new feature and play it off like nothing happened.
Comment by Andrew Mager — July 13, 2008 @ 8:13 pm (801)
I am not a twitter fan. I was initially, but it got boring. It made me feel like a spammer, and a stalker, since it is all pretty much one way.
I can reply to people, but unless they follow me, it is unlikely they will see my replies, and even if they do follow me my reply gets lost in the sea of noise.
Plurk does have a much higher learning curve, but it is so much more engaging and worthwhile. I agree that it needs a better IM then the private plurk option since those are generally missed as well, but plurk does have a basic API and I know a few people have developed outside apps for it.
Great post though
Stephen aka darthweef
Comment by Stephen Johnson — August 13, 2008 @ 9:50 pm (868)