Archive for the 'microbloggy' Category

Twitter Without Replies

As is no doubt well covered, Twitter has been without the “replies” feature for some time tonight.

So, now what? I realized within a few minutes that the main reason I spend any time on Twitter is to check the replies tab. Yes, I push stuff out there, everyone does; but that’s only part of the point.

Twitter was conceived as a sort of “presence” service. I’m doing this. I’m watching that. I’m at home, work, I’m sleeping, I’m sick/tired/well/happy/bored/confused/apathetic. I don’t think that it’s difficult to argue, however, that Twitter became a lot more than that, and that the real attraction of Twitter is the conversation (or, at least, the pseudo-conversation).

I’d feel comfortable saying that the @ replies are what made Twitter avoid being merely a curiousity, and turned it to a killer app.
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Replies Are Optional

WWDC was evidently creating quite a load on Twitter… you might have noticed that the Replies tab was actually disabled for a while this morning (I was not quick enough to grab a screenshot; oh well).

Wait… replies? Yes. I guess they’re optional.

That said, it is working now, and twitter seems to be fine, so far.

Ping.fm Invite Code

If you’re interested in trying out the Ping.fm service, which allows you to update multiple microblog-type sites in one fell swoop, you may want to visit the Ping.fm sign up page, and use the code “tastyping”.

I’m not sure yet if I will be using this much; I rarely want to post the same thing to every site I use… and FriendFeed’s aggregation of other sites also makes this a great way to have a lot of duplicates in some areas. But for some, it may be useful.

What do you think of this sort of thing?

New Twitter Limitations

Jeffro reports there are new Twitter limitations on following and updating.

I’d echo yes, this seems like a good idea.

So far, my feeling is still that Twitter’s core user base will not abandon ship while they are fixing their architecture and in other ways resolving their issues. A bad sign for Twitter is that I’m increasingly seeing people use a different service as “their new Twitter” (see Leo Laporte’s first comment in this FriendFeed discussion). However, a stable, robust Twitter could still win these people back, I think.

Twitter Groups

Mashable reports Twitter is working on groups.

I’d welcome this feature; I predict, however, that we’re going to hear a chorus asking why work on a new feature, given issues the service is already having?

Then again, I wonder if people spending time only in groups, in smaller subsets of followers/followees, might actually lessen the load on the server?

Our Webserves: They Has Discrepancies.

Our webserves. They has discrepancies.

I’m telling you, this blog writes itself.

I know it’s around here somewhere…

Twitter lost a database.

Well, that would explain it. Though as of this writing, it looks like they may have found it again.

Kudos for the increased communication, though.

What About Jaiku?

With the obvious exception of Gmail, Google’s forays into social networking do not seem to have been as well-received. There is orkut, of course. Orkut is huge in some parts of the globe, so maybe this is a bad example; or at least, it’s an example of being somewhat North-America-centric in my perspective. That said, North America is where I’m at, and here, Orkut is no big splash. While even the non-internet savvy in North America are familiar with dozens of news stories about MySpace and Facebook, I doubt Orkut has popped up on most folks’ radar.

Jaiku seems to be in about the same boat. I had never heard of it until Google bought it, though I realize that many other early adopters had heard of it. It has most or all of twitter’s features, and a few of FriendFeeds, in that it can import feeds from other sites, such as Twitter.
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Side Scrolling Away

The implementation of Plurk’s side-scrolling UI is certainly nothing to scoff at. It works perfectly, and I imagine represents the product of hours of coding and testing.

That said, it’s probably also one of the more polarizing features of Plurk. People seem to love it or hate it. Strangely, people don’t always stop using Plurk simply because they dislike it, so clearly Plurk is already offering something compelling.

I’m one who wishes there were at least an alternative to the main UI… there is the mobile view but at the moment, it is lacking some of the other features of the web view: alerts, ability to see your list of friends or your karma… It would be nice to have a vertical list view which still keeps all the other features of the main web view. The mobile explore page seems to indicate that more features will be added, so maybe it will turn into a little better alternative.

I also realized that my experience with plurk’s UI does depend on the computer I’m using. Using a computer with plenty of RAM and other resources, it doesn’t bother me as much as when I’m using one with a little less overhead. So a vertical view might be a nice friendly gesture to those with slower computers, as well.

Twitter’s “With Friends” View Gone, Indefinitely

You might have noticed that the “With Friends” view recently disappeared from individual user pages. Twitter Status has a post explaining this, possibly in response to an apparent outcry; it seems people were subscribing to the feed generated by this page. The feed is still available, but requires user authentication, which many feed readers do not support.

In view of recent/ongoing technical issues, I think the move to dispense with the “With Friends” view was a prudent one; they point out that it was rarely accessed but still computationally expensive. Any time you remove any feature, though, you are going to hear an outcry from those who used it, and you certainly want to attempt to meet all your users needs.

What do you think? Do you miss the “With Friends” view? Can you see a need to subscribe to those feeds?