Mathew's comments - Latest Comments in Is Twitter losing it?

Re: Is Twitter losing it?

sol — Fri, 30 May 2008 02:16:52 -0000

The addiction argument is wrong. People do leave. I follow almost 6000 people. Nearly 2000 follow me. I see and feel the changes in traffic far more than users only connected to their face-to-face friends.

My experience with Twitter, especially with the volume of posts/responses lately, is that people aren't sticking around. My past experience with services that have massive outages is that no matter how popular or addictive, large numbers will stop using it when it's out.

Re: Is Twitter losing it?

cfomarshall — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:02:37 -0000

Reports say Twitter is in the final stage of closing $15M round with Spark in Boston. Details area attached in my blog. I suspect that the fix is more framework and architecture related than bodies right now.

Re: Is Twitter losing it?

Maggy Young — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:41:13 -0000

Agree with Sam, FF doesn't replace Twitter's brevity which was what made Twitter different - and useful. Also that it seems to be dying, the noise is now reaching a crescendo. So why don't they do a major fix it ? Funding problems without current monetization plans ? If not, what is the reason ? Anyone got any ideas ?

Re: Is Twitter losing it?

mathewi — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:54:04 -0000

Spotted it in my FriendFeed and couldn't resist it :-)

Re: Is Twitter losing it?

Hugh MacLeod — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:32:23 -0000

Hey, I thought you'd stopped reading my stuff...? ;-)

Re: Is Twitter losing it?

MikeonTV — Thu, 29 May 2008 11:58:50 -0000

Where else do people expect to get instant gratification from other social media users? IRC?

Re: Is Twitter losing it?

Sam — Thu, 29 May 2008 02:19:29 -0000

I've noticed people have been bailing over the past week. They're just out & out deleting their accounts. Too bad actually. Anyway, it's incumbent upon Twitter to fix their problems unless they enjoy bad press.

The "A" list can continue to blindly promote Twitter but they're going to tarnish their reputations!

I do use FF but I find it's info overload. The reason why Tweets are great is that it's short and to the point.

Re: Is Twitter losing it?

Jamie — Thu, 29 May 2008 01:58:25 -0000

It might be the best option. From what Steve Gillmor was saying yesterday, Twitter can't be fixed as it stands.

If I was Ev i'd be looking to sell immediately and cash in.

Re: Is Twitter losing it?

robitaille — Thu, 29 May 2008 01:53:33 -0000

the only reason I'm not totally switching over is the fact that I have many friends still on Twitter only; if I switch fully to FF, they will lose contacts with my updates. Until then, posting to Twitter is the only way to reach the most people

Re: Is Twitter losing it?

Paul Marshall — Thu, 29 May 2008 01:51:47 -0000

I am a relatively new user to Twitter (approx a month). I was almost entirely an IM user in my short tenure. In the past week I have found that I have I have adjusted my habits to be able to use Twitter on my laptop (although not as frequently). I write my subconscious willingness to do this to it being new to me and wanting to continue to particpate in conversations and connect with my new Twitter friends. I also know I am not yet as emotional as some posters and users are based on my newby status.

Bottom line for me, I do not believe that I will sustain the modification of my behaviours to fit the available service but will soon modify the tool (change to FriendFeed) to fit the way I want to use it.

It is new technology and it is free so I think it is fair to cut them some slack. But there is a lemming aspect to this and once some of the pioneers start moving the rest will move enmasse. Once people leave I think loyalty will build with FriendFeed and unless similiar problems occur there it will be difficult for Twitter to recover .

I hope they get it fixed in the next couple days....I am routing for them but I won't hold out much longer.

Re: Is Twitter losing it?

mathewi — Thu, 29 May 2008 01:49:04 -0000

I was thinking the exact same thing, Jamie -- if there was an easy way
to set up Twitter friends in FriendFeed I would do it (Internet Duct
Tape has a way, but it's a Windows program and sounds complicated).
As it is, I'm considering setting up imaginary friends (I love that
term) for those people I really want to follow from Twitter and axing
the rest.

Re: Is Twitter losing it?

Jamie — Thu, 29 May 2008 01:45:49 -0000

If there was an easy way to move my contacts over, i'm gone. I don't have a Windows machine so that app for it is no use to me.

If FriendFeed was smart they would build a contact importer of their own, that crawled your Twitter contacts to see if they were already on FF. And if they weren't, it would set up Imaginery Friends with the appropriate Twitter account added as a feed so that you would still get all of your contacts Tweets in FF.

Then once you are on FF, you find that comments start to ween you off the need to Tweet.