I’ve been away from Twitter for about 4 months as I’ve stated in previous posts. Many of you know my frustrations regarding Twitter’s smoke & mirrors routine when it comes to uptime and availability. Most of this angst was driven by my lust for Twitter’s absent Track feature. Last week at bearhug camp, the guys at Twitter were interviewed by Steve Gillmor and Dave Winer regarding various hot topics such as Track. Leo Laporte was kind enough to stream the entire event live. While I didn’t learn anything new from their (Twitter’s) responses, I did finally come to one important realization:

Track is not coming back.

At least, not in the form that I previously loved. I loved that I had access to a ginormous global chat room and I had the ability to filter it for terms that I cared about. The potency of information I received was unparalleled. It was fast, real-time, and personal. Those days are gone and I’ve accepted it. The stable Twitter that everyone loves today is not the same one of the past. Many people are content with it and are happy with a web based term searching feature called Twitter Search. For me, it’s not the same, but I have to let it go and move on.

Track/XMPP has proven to be a technological hurdle as our friends at identi.ca are learning. It’s a beast. They haven’t been able to keep their implementation going consistently with just a small fraction of what Twitter has to deal with. My issue up until this moment was that I didn’t want to believe that Twitter’s “firehose” of information for everyone was too much for any current implementation to handle. Now I know, and knowing is half the battle.™

In short, I’ve tasted Track and it was so delicious, the flavor still lingers on my tongue, but I’ve got to let it go.

So, by letting go of the possibility that Track is ever going to exist again, I am able to use Twitter again. Twitter, in its current crippled state, has proven to be fairly stable. By disabling my beloved Track, and other back end tweaks that they have no disclosed, they seem to be able to handle the load.

I also went on record that I didn’t want to use Twitter as a spamming/marketing platform as most people seem to want to do. Over the next few days/weeks, I’m going to try to reinvent Twitter’s usefulness to me. Since I once was more a consumer of information more than a provider, I now have to find a balance using the tools that are available to me. Of course, I could try to cling to my roots and use TwitterSpy, but then I would be lying to myself.

So as of today, I’m officially back on Twitter. The means by which I will use it is yet to be determined, but if you want to follow me on there, I’m at http://www.twitter.com/bwana.

Related posts:

• Twitter 2008: Get Used To It (Goodbye IM/Track)
• After 4 Months, Has Twitter Improved?
• My Twitter-Fu is Better Than Yours

It’s still not common knowledge among my online friends that I left Twitter on June 06, 2008. It’s been about 4 months since I did, and it seems like a lot has changed. Twitter is receiving praise for their improved “uptime” over the past months. Some have gone on record to state this could be the end of the “fail whale”. I have a problem with this conclusion. When a service is not working, it’s not up.

Period.

Twitter has had issues with their XMPP Instant Messaging (IM) feature and their Track feature. I went on record to state that these features were my primary way to use Twitter. Guess what? Twitter IM and Track are still not working, and it seems like nobody cares. These were two features which made Twitter great in my mind. People seem content with “hacks” such as Summize search (now acquired and called Twitter search) and Twitterspy, which relies on the former. This is not track. This is a hack. I’m not knocking the authors of Twitterspy because I think it’s a great way to get around the lack of track on Twitter. It’s still a hack though.

Know what’s even worse? Twitter is not even acknowledging the return of IM or Track in their latest status blog entries. The last mention of the IM feature was July 7th, 2008, and the last mention of Track was June 13th, 2008:

Track: this service is disabled and will remain offline until it can be reworked

I hope I’m missing something obvious, but I don’t think I am. People like Steve Gillmor believe IM/Track conflicts with the business goals of Twitter and he believes this is why it’s possibly gone forever.

I don’t know the details behind this, but at this point, I don’t care. Either remove the services from your offering or acknowledge your service is not up until IM and Track are working.

When Twitter brings these services back, then I can acknowledge such statements “99.3% uptime”. Until then, I get a bad taste in my mouth when a company says their service is “up” and several features are disabled. Disagree with me? Well, ask Twitter who did they negotiate their Service Level Agreement (SLA) with? How can you boast about uptime with no SLA?

On the flip side, I’m glad to see Twitter getting mainstream coverage, like with CNN. I’m just saddened I can’t use it for anything other than a spamming platform, which I refuse to do. So after 4 months, has Twitter improved? No. Why? Because it’s still down.

Related posts:

• Twitter 2008: Get Used To It (Goodbye IM/Track)
• The Reason Why I Returned to Twitter: Track is Dead
• My Twitter-Fu is Better Than Yours

One of the conversations that stemmed from our “Twit-Out” a few months ago was, “Can we save Twitter with open-source?” My response was the following:

I agree that Twitter could use some help, but I don’t know if opening the source is the main solution. I do believe, a healthy dose of stiff competition encourages innovation. [...]

Today, I joined Identi.ca. Is it YATC (Yet another Twitter clone)? Sure seems like it on the surface. Identi.ca offers a timeline view identical to Twitter, limits your updates to 140 characters, and it offers Jabber/Gtalk posts and updates. If that ain’t a Twitter clone, I don’t know what is. Here’s what the founding company, Control Yourself ,has to say:

Identi.ca is similar to existing microblogging sites such as Twitter, Jaiku, or Pownce. Unlike those services, Identi.ca’s underlying software is available under an Open Source license. Identi.ca is also the first service to support OpenMicroBlogging, a standard for exchanging short messages between microblogging sites. Identi.ca also makes public user data available under a Creative Commons license in standard formats.

That’s a great quote because it clearly outlines a huge differentiator from Twitter: Identi.ca is open sourced. I stand by my original assessment that it’s not clear whether an open sourced Twitter will actually be a better Twitter, but I will watch it very closely. Another point that should be noted about Identi.ca, is that it supports OpenMicroBlogging. The software that runs Identi.ca, called Laconi.ca, allows users to run their own federated instance of the software. This has made advocates of a federated Twitter, like Dave Winer, very excited about the possibilities. I have went on record to say that a federated architecture is not also guaranteed to produce a successful Twitter, as there have been many stable non-federated messaging systems. They all had a sound design. I’m not saying it won’t work, I’m stating that it’s not a silver bullet. Either way, it’s happening now that Identi.ca has entered the space. With juggernauts such as Winer “excited” about it, it can only be a good thing for developer momentum.

So what are my thoughts about Identi.ca so far? My day 0 impressions are:

It’s slow. Not surprised at all by this. The user base is increasing a blistering pace, and I’m sure their developers are adjusting. The source is out there, so before you complain too much about it, go fix it!

According to their FAQ, many of my gripes are “coming soon”. Given the age of this service, I cannot declare it a success or failure just yet. If anyone else does, I will greatly question their motives. I do think that the addition of open source and a possible federated Twitter make it a service to watch in the coming months.

Twitter, it’s time to get stable right now.

Related posts:

• episode015 podcast – asterisk open sourced pbx, my new gaming rig
• episode012 podcast – open sourced podcast utilities
• Feedback Regarding Open Direction and Open Communities