DISQUS

Connected Well: Twitter Boycott? Meh.

  • Paul Chaney · 1 year ago
    I appreciate your understanding of the problem Twitter faces by virtue of the way the framework is built. My issue is that we keep hoping and waiting for Twitter to right the ship, and they haven't. All I'm hoping to do is fire a volley across the bow.

    Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to suggest that Biz and Evan are oblivious to the rampant dissatisfaction among the ranks of the twitterati. It is (was) my hope a boycott would do more to get their attention and perhaps a more thoughtful response than just a cute whale and an "oops."

    I love Twitter...am a huge fan of it in fact. All my friends are there and, yes, I like the SMS feature even though I rarely use it. Still, I'm committed to seeing this through and welcome anyone who sees fit to join me.
  • robertmerrill · 1 year ago
    @Paul you're totally right. I hope the fix it. I am not sure we'll make a
    dent in the problem at the scale that a true boycott could/should/would... I
    really hope they get the thing stable, too... and I hope they hurry before
    people run away to the look-alikes
  • Chad Benentt · 1 year ago
    What about trying Pownce or Plurk. Both offer the same functionality without the problems.
  • John · 1 year ago
    Hey Chad,

    Plurk does have mobile access, and some pretty cool features. The difference is that it doesn't yet have a client other than the website or the mobile site. I love that Twitter has, through 34 party clients such as Twhirl, the ability to leave my web browser. Twhirl, by the way, offer nearly (but not quite) all the same bells and whistles that Plurk does.
  • robertmerrill · 1 year ago
    Plurk scares me with their logo... and only has web/mobile web access.

    Pownce, well, it has a funny name
  • Matthew Reinbold · 1 year ago
    Pownce does not support SMS/text support, nor will it ever. Pownce is a file sharing service that goes to great lengths in articulating that they ARE NOT twitter and NEVER wish to be.

    http://getsatisfaction.com/pownce/topics/pownce...

    Finally, there are two reasons why these other services have not suffered the scalability problems that Twitter has. (1) They've perfected application development or (2) they don't have enough users. Given the niche nature of the service and the audience that seeks it out I'm inclined its more the latter.
  • robertmerrill · 1 year ago
    Excellent points, Matt. And, since, if the scalability issues were a proven problem to solve, you'd think either Twitter or someone else would have done it by now...
  • tylermitchell · 1 year ago
    I joined Twitter to use Remember The Milk, and then found My Mile Marker and a few other tools. I didn't start socializing on it for a couple of months. Yes, the social part is cool, but the tools are the clencher for me. RTM, MYMM, TWYE, Chacha, Buxfer, etc - I am able to keep my life much more organized because of Twitter's API -all those other sites are just toys that I don't care about.
  • blog24 · 1 year ago
    I am certainly not boycotting Twitter today (Jul 4) or on any other day. As you mention in your post, SMS support is the major feature why I continue to use the original micro-blogging site.

    Twitter will work 24/7 soon.

    Besides, I like the Fail Whale - I don't like seeing it on Twitter too often, but I'd rather see something that makes me smile than a plain old error page, or worse 'server not responding'.

    My thoughts about Twitter and the so called boycott continue on my blog... blog24.co.uk