Bwana.org » Microblogging

I Liked Twitter More When It Was Underground

Bwana — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:08:53 +0000

Tongue in cheek

Twitter has really blown up this past month and has been talked about on just about every mainstream news front. I had a conversation with my brother the other day and he even said “I’ve been seeing people talk about it, but I’ve been wondering what it is”. This prompted me to post a message on Twitter and I got the following mixed responses:

Bwana: You don't realize how weird Twitter is until you try to explain it to your family. Now I”m questioning why I even use it

about a day ago

Tue Mar 03 12:47:20 +0000 2009

nelsonmaud: cause im crazy lol

about a day ago

Tue Mar 03 12:48:08 +0000 2009

DonMcAllister: I've so been there! Still using it though

about a day ago

Tue Mar 03 12:48:54 +0000 2009

nocky100: Hmm do you have to defend why you go to the watercooler in the office and gossip with friends?

about a day ago

Tue Mar 03 12:49:11 +0000 2009

davejohnston: That makes little sense to me. Just use it. No remorse.

about a day ago

Tue Mar 03 12:49:50 +0000 2009

Chris_Huff: For some reason, Alice Cooper's Welcome To My Nightmare started playing in my head when you said that…lol

about a day ago

Tue Mar 03 12:51:44 +0000 2009

ebonydad: If it the same family members who call for computer help, or help setting the time on their VCR, I wouldn't try to explain.

about a day ago

Tue Mar 03 12:56:00 +0000 2009

joedawson: My family don't understand the appeal of Twitter either, with my brother drawing comparisons with MySpace!

about a day ago

Tue Mar 03 12:57:10 +0000 2009

datalore_tv: I have been trying to explain it to my brothers for months!

about a day ago

Tue Mar 03 12:59:47 +0000 2009

itsaholliday: i agree, trying to explain it to friends and family is one of the toughest things

about a day ago

Tue Mar 03 13:09:19 +0000 2009

zengiraffe: My feelings exactly. I tried explaining Twitter to a friend and he looked at me like I need to be locked up for my own protection.

about a day ago

Tue Mar 03 13:19:31 +0000 2009

KMPhotographer: You should do a video or blog post on how to explain Twitter to others. I'm sure there are plenty of people in the same boat.

about a day ago

Tue Mar 03 16:08:58 +0000 2009

I don’t know what it is, but when I explain Twitter to others, I get this weird feeling of “Why do *I* even like it?”. There’s so much about Twitter that can’t be explained (a la Matrix), but I feel Twitter is much more than what it seems on the surface. Sometimes it’s frustrating when people don’t get it, but I’m not too concerned about that. Either people like something or they don’t, you can’t change the way they think. (See: Myspace)

Still, it’s amazing to see the growth of Twitter, but the ride there was fun. In case you missed the tongue in cheek reference, I was kidding with the title, but I do believe Twitter is about to change now that it’s mainstream. Whether that change will be for the best or the worst, remains to be seen. You can follow me on Twitter, I’m @Bwana.

Twitter 2008: Get Used To It (Goodbye IM/Track)

Bwana — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 15:16:13 +0000

Last month, I blogged my return to Twitter due to the fact that the Track feature was dead. I saw the responses Twitter gave Steve Gillmor at Bearhug camp and determined they were prolonging the obvious: Track is dead, and they’re not bringing it back.

Yesterday, I learned that Twitter has officially gone on record to say that their Instant Messaging (IM) feature is not coming back. (in so many words):

To summarize, we want to bring IM back. We intend to bring IM back. But we’ve officially moved it from our Things That are Broken list to our Things We Want to Build list. Based on our analysis, the cost-to-benefit for IM for the most users is not as high as some other things—so it will be a while before we tackle it. Like any budget (in this case, the budget of our limited engineering time), tough calls need to be made—especially in these times. And while we don’t expect everyone to agree with this decision, we at least want to be straightforward with you.

Translation: Don’t count on IM coming back, ever. Steve Gillmor doesn’t sound surprised by the announcement since I believe he shares the same pessimism with me regarding IM/Track at Twitter. ReadWriteWeb thinks IM will possibly be back next spring. I believe that’s a very optimistic view.

If you must have IM/Track functionality, there are a couple of options available:

Follow TweetTrak and send direct messages on terms you want to track. It will send you responses via direct message.
TwitterSpy is a popular option (I use IdentiSpy for tracking on identi.ca). It is an XMPP jabber bot with lots of features.

Twitter’s stance on IM re-emphasizes my goal of rediscovering how to best utilize Twitter. Since my return, I’ve been using TweetDeck and TwitterSpy with some success. This is my current method of utilizing Twitter:

TweetDeck to do non-realtime tracking of terms using their search feature. I also use TweetDeck to track replies, and keywords related to my websites and me.
TwitterSpy for some interests such as mobile phone news, Apple, web 2.0 topics
Twinkle on my iPhone for mobile Twittering
Twitter through Ping.FM for general blast messages

I’m still clinging to Track by using TwitterSpy, but I find it to be more reliable than TweetDeck’s search implementation. Once TweetDeck becomes more reliable, I can get away from using IM completely.

So this is the new Twitter folks. I say we start getting used to it, adapt, and adjust.

After 4 Months, Has Twitter Improved?

Bwana — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:56:55 +0000

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.

Kwippy Offers Stability First

Bwana — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 20:06:46 +0000

Twitter‘s architectural problems are well known. Many of us in the social networking scene have never been so focused on what’s under the hood of a particular service. While I do have a great deal of performance testing and tuning experience, I have never seen it pushed so hard in the social web.

Not to my surprise, a new Twitter competitor arose recently called Kwippy, and they came out swinging. This blog post by Kwippy highlights their architecture and it focuses on why they will not succumb to fail-whale syndrome:

Today in the world of micro-blogging, problems of twitter have become nearly household news. This has made site developers think about how can they make their site stable and scale with good Quality of service to the user (you , me , everyone). This post is about how we have planned kwippy, the whys and how we ensure that kwippy, the whale does not beach.

Yes, you read that correctly. They referenced the whale. At any rate, Kwippy is a micro/nanoblogging platform which reminds me of Pownce, Jaiku, and Plurk but with minor differences:

It does not have a (140) character limit
It does not offer rich media embedding (pictures, video, music)
It notifies you of new subscriptions via IM
It does offer commenting on “kwips” that are posted, but users can “subscribe” to these threads giving them a convenient means of “keeping up”.
It does not have mobile features (SMS, iPhone/mobile/wap webpage)

Some of these differences may not be as bad as they seem. For example, the lack of a character limitation propels Kwippy in the realm of Tumblr and Posterous tumblelogs. Without rich media embeds or text formatting, however, it kind of falls flat on its face. I have submitted feedback to the authors regarding some shortcomings that I’ve seen and they seem very responsive. That’s always a plus. Here’s a walkthrough:

The biggest flaw that I can find with Kwippy is the look and feel of the website. It needs a CSS makeover ASAP. This issue is not a critical one as its in private beta and also a very young application. The look and feel of the website is more easily addressable than say the database architecture. If they address this before going live, I can see this as a decent contender. The feature-set is fairly weak, but with so much focus on a stable architecture, one can’t help but hope for the best for Kwippy. Keep your eye on this one.

You can find me on Kwippy at http://www.kwippy.com/bwana.

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