Well played, Twitter. Wait…what’s the opposite of well played?
And this is after they fixed it. (Via Twitter Counter)
So, like so many of you, last night I noticed that I’d lost somewhere around 500 followers, and about 300 “friends” (that is, people I follow back).
Twitter explained the problem, announced they were working on it, and got it about 90% corrected before I went to bed, but it’s still a gargantuan fail whale, because I’m still short about 130 folks, and I doubt they were all spammers. And since I’ve never followed a spammer, I’m down about 100 folks I follow, and I have no way to figure out who it is and get them back.
And so I ask: What’s it’ going to take for people to leave Twitter?
Last night was a pretty major fail. It wasn’t just “oh the replies tab is down for the day” or “aw shucks, the sms function is batty”. It was a fail that managed to seriously inhibit one of the main reasons we even go to Twitter and stick by it through all the bugs–the ability to connect and converse.
I wish I were stronger, because I’d announce right now that I was leaving Twitter for good, close down my account and urge everyone to come join me on one of the many competitors out there.
But I can’t, because for better or worse, usually worse, frequently way, way, worse, Twitter is still where the action is. Damnit.
Filed under: Twitter
Too true. Last night was one hell of a fail. While I don’t know anyone who renounced Twitter completely because of it, I do know it pushed folks a lot closer to that breaking point. But I’m like you, I still love Twitter. I’ll probably stick with it til the end.
The thing that most people need to remember is that while Twitter may have its many quirks, it is still a free service. There are no annoying ads, and no recurring monthly fees. Complaining about Twitter, and it’s many issues basically equates to the same as someone complaining about a gift that you gave them.
In my humble opinion, it is much more annoying listening to the moaning, and groaning of the Twitterverse when ever an issue does arise then the actual issue itself.
Just enjoy Twitter for what it can do, and stop the whining when it does decide to flake out. It doesn’t help matters anyway.
Carrie, I agree to an extent, you know what they say, you get what you pay for.
But I do think in a way, we are paying. There’s a reason social networking sites are selling to big companies for hundreds of millions of dollars when they’ve never charged a dime to their users. As Twitter users, we are valuable to the company/team behind the website. And there has never been a group more loyal than us–how often is Twitter buggy/annoying? A few times a week. I think Twitter should do better than that.
I love Twitter, I don’t want to leave it, and likely never will. It’s still the best game in town, I just think it could do much, much better.