Illustration by Pasquale
You know I love Twitter and would never leave our happy Fail Whale friend for another other mo-blogging site. But lately, I’m worried that with so much Fail, even the most dedicated Twitterers may abandon ship soon.
The first suckage: The @tweeting discrepancy:
Did you know that twitter replies only picks up an @username tweet if it is at the beginning of the tweet if you are using the web? For example, if I tweeted:
- I’m hanging out at #ASweetBar in #USA with @chilldude82 & @hawttechgrrl & @l33tgam3r_w00t”. None of this tweet studs would get my @replies. Harsh.
And this super casual tweet would probably get lost totally lost in the twitter archives:
- “i bet you feel so warm @kevinrose, like McDonald’s Hot Apple Pie after cooling in my 1991 Ford Fiesta for 30 mins while I go pick up a rental of “The Notebook” from the corner Blockbuster’s. mm.”
I know. Tragic. But it does explain why Kevin called the police that time when I showed up at his bedroom window with my iPhone flashlight app on full blast sporting a qikking N95. If he’d got all my @tweets we’d probably be chilaxing in some sweet bean bag chairs.
But Seriously, that’s a lot of missed @tweets that people have sent me that I’ve never received and vice versa. My tip: If you want to see all your @tweets, use search.twitter.com.
The second suckage: Twitter cuts of SMS DMs to users outside the US/Canada.
Last week Twitter announced that they were suspending outgoing SMS to their UK number which means that anyone outside of the US and Canada (basically the rest of the world), cannot receive Direct Messages on their mobile phones. Being able to send SMS DMs internationally for free was one of the coolest aspects of twitter. I personally used this service to contact all my ‘rest-of-the-world’ friends on their mobiles a lot. Maybe we began to abuse this free service, and that’s why they had to pull the plug. Maybe they should start charging for this service. For a small fee, I’m sure loasds of people would paypal twitter some $$ love.
What do you think? What IS Twitter doing? Let’s discuss the Fail in Team Twitter.
Pasquale said on August 23rd, 2008 at 2:59 am
That bird was going to @ propose to his girlfriend. What a jerk.
Dimitrio said on August 23rd, 2008 at 3:07 am
Totally ridiculous!
JCB said on August 23rd, 2008 at 3:10 am
Fail Fail…
Luc said on August 23rd, 2008 at 3:14 am
I think losing international SMS DMs isn’t great, but I can understand why they’ve done it, given the cost and a lack of income for Twitter (excluding Japan).
But missing @replies because they’re not at the start of your message? Massive fail. I bet 99% of people won’t know about that - I certainly didn’t. Spread the word - we need a t-shirt or something (”I @replied you, honest.”).
Teymur said on August 23rd, 2008 at 3:32 am
outrage! lol… well now we know at least.
John Hood said on August 23rd, 2008 at 6:42 am
No SMS in the UK and you’ve stopped following me! It is a dark time for the Twitterverse!
Miiitch said on August 23rd, 2008 at 1:17 pm
I did know about having to @reply at the very beginning of a tweet, because if you notice when you don’t, your tweet doesn’t say “in reply to @whoever” at the bottom.
Also, whass goin’ on with the vectorama?
fotoeins said on August 23rd, 2008 at 2:44 pm
To paraphrase what Denzel Washington’s character, Keith Frazier, said about cutting a deal in “Inside Man”,
“everybody’s got theirs, I’m going to get mine …”
Dana said on August 23rd, 2008 at 3:04 pm
On the other hand, I think I’ve been seeing a lot less of the Fail Whale lately.
Jacob Burke said on August 23rd, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Lisa,
I get tweets as replies when @jacobburke is somewhere within them. So I am not sure what problem you are having with this.
Cheers,
Jake
Ning, What Should You Do? : dougdaulton.com said on August 24th, 2008 at 2:29 am
[...] PS: This post was inspired, in part, by Lisa Bettany’s Twitter, What Are You Doing?” rant. [...]
kristarella said on August 24th, 2008 at 3:35 am
I was aware of the @reply needing to be at the beginning, but I think that I’ve been notified of a reply when it wasn’t at the beginning too. My guesses are that either Twitter behaved how everyone expected for a minute, or it was my Twitter client that figured out it was a reply.
I don’t think that too many people would be willing to PayPal Twitter until they provide a solid service. “Maybe we can get our act together if we have more money.” Is not very enticing. However, they haven’t gone down in recent times that I’ve noticed (except for one fail wail I got yesterday or the day before). I’d probably be able to swing them something.
Kenny Hyder said on August 25th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Ah, that explains why I never saw any responses from you!
or at least I hope so!
Twitter can’t charge, that would be lame, and people would surely drop off if they started to.. But, I’m hoping that they’ll fix some of these problems in an update soon..
Of course, Ive always used search.twitter.com as my main way to keep track of @’s, I just use ff with the auto refresh plugin to check it for me!
Warren Whitlock said on August 26th, 2008 at 8:07 am
The @ at the beginning rule is a good one.
Putting the @ there is like addressing a message TO that person.
Mentioning a person in a tweet with the @ name allows other to follow the conversation, or the person.
http://search.twitter.com and most of the Twitter clients pick up the @ anywhere in the tweet.
Also, a setting (in the “setting” section of Twitter) will allow a users to turn off any @ at the begging messages that are not between two friends.
My advice. @ at the beginning if you want to address the person.. @’s as often as you can to let others know who you are talking about.
Dan said on August 27th, 2008 at 2:42 am
You know, I’ve thought about this a lot and I really think that if there were a decent like for like alternative Everyone would go for it… but there isn’t such an alternative. Plurk is too radical and full of 13 year olds, Pownce, again is a little too complex. Also, let’s not forget the well supported API that the others simply lack.
As for the text message thing, I blame Apple. I think Apple have bribed the Twitter peeps with heaps of shiny uber Apple swag to make them turn off the non-domestic text service. Why? So people go out and buy an iPhone so they can use Twitteriffic over 3G and not rely on SMS.
The @replies thing is a bit crappy. If I put in @username at any point in my tweet, I want it to be treated as an @reply, no exceptions. Sort it out douchebags!
that is all.
Brandice said on September 21st, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Brightkite is my favorite service in the world. I’m only on Twitter now to check on replies and other people’s tweets and my BK messages auto-twitter for me. Brightkite gets EVERYthing right where Twitter has dropped the ball at almost every turn for several months now. Brightkite’s the future (IMO, of course).