Tuesday 21 June 2011

Twitter isn't working for me any more

I know why, before anyone says anything but it's making things almost impossible.
I was under the mistaken impression that the Retweet function which Twitter built into the functionality of the platform was so that people like me who like to share interesting stuff with other people, could.

I can't, any more.

I am probably what Twitter would call a 'power user'. This, unfortunately, now seems to equate to 'person we don't value any more' and that's a dangerous business model. I can't run Tweetdeck, it constantly freezes and crashes. I have 2 list columns open, 1 for mentions, 1 for DM's and 1 for favourited tweets. Not excessive, you would think (and I've checked with other heavy users too - they've got more than me open). The basic Twitter homepage is now unusable too as I can't send my own tweets or retweet others.

Except I can - but only 2 or 3 before I'm banned. I assume I'm going over some limit imposed by Twitter. But you see, I don't use Twitter how Twitter is trying to impose on me I must. During a working day, I do not sit there watching Twitter all the time - I dip in and out once or twice, catch up, say something, retweet anything interesting and then produce no activity on their servers whatsoever for 4 hours.

In other words, the restrictions they're imposing on me as a power user, do not fit the pattern of use of what I think will be most busy power users who work for a living. Now all of this would be fine, but I've noticed that as a result, other people are retweeting an awful let less as well. And that's now impacting on my learning because I am simply not coming across as much interesting stuff as I used to. I'm also sending tweets and no one is seeing them - I @ people and then come back a few days later and tell them I responded to the question they asked on Twitter and they say 'no you didn't'.  I DM people and they DM me and they never arrive - or some DM's arrive on the web interface and others on Tweetdeck and yet others on Twitbird on my iPad.

I'm not checking 3 different places to ensure I've got all the important info I need. And don't tell me Twitter don't mean for important stuff to be sent via Twitter - the switch to https kind of indicated that yes they were expecting those kinds of transactions.

So where am I now?

Annoyed. Frustrated. Considering the point of Twitter having been removed from me entirely. I can't even use it as a social tool and not a business tool any more because well, what's the point? It's so unreliable, I might as well go back to sms's. At least I get told when the other person wont have seen my message!

I appreciate it is a free platform. However I also know they're going to be getting asked some serious questions about revenue generation around now. Losing your power users and your most vocal proponents of your system about now isn't going to help with that.

No comments:

Post a Comment