Twitter Keeps Breaking. Will Twits Be Patient?
Twitter has had a rough week. What has been one of the quirks of a budding new communication medium (new to most people but not to those who have been paying attention for the last year and half), downtime is beginning to be a more frequent pain for Twitter and Twit alike. The micro-blogging service has admitted that there is a lot of work to do to make the system stable. But here’s the deal. Most people who use Twitter just roll with it. Though I’ve observed more comments about Twitter’s instability in the last few weeks, the overall tone isn’t that they’re going to abandon Twitter, rather they just want Twitter to fix what’s broken and move on.
Twitter’s growth is both helping it and hurting it right now. It hurts because so many more people are using it and the system keeps crashing. It helps, because more people are using it, connecting with their friends, and realizing it’s where everyone is…rather than leaving to find people on a Twitter-like service such as Pownce (where everyone isn’t.)
So…to all the fellow Twits (I’m not sure if that’s what we’re calling Twitter users but it works for this post) in waiting, here’s a little something for your desktop I made using the Parody Motivator Generator.
Tags: twitter, twitter broken, twitter downtime
May 24th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
I used the down-time to get creative, while still being able to vent my frustration.
Enjoy: http://snurl.com/2a942
Cheers,
Dave
May 25th, 2008 at 4:58 am
I have a feeling we will be patient. I’m not sure we have any other choice. Eventually there will be another game in town and then these guys are going to have to step it up!
May 25th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Great image/shirt idea Dave. I may have to get one!
Pete, you’re right. There’s not really another choice that has the same adoption rate at this point. The good news for Twitter is that there’s still some relational equity left to spend with users. I just hope they don’t spend it all before the service gets solid.
May 27th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
[...] Even though Twitter is free, the “you get what you pay for” mindset won’t cut it for Twitter’s users. If Twitter doesn’t get its act together, users will surely continue to complain at the top of the lungs, and eventually abandon the service in favor of something more reliable. (Read Bill Seaver’s thoughts on the matter here.) [...]
May 27th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Followed the link from Collide. So true…now Twitteriffic isn’t working for me…
I won’t abandoned Twitter yet. But it really needs to get fixed.
May 27th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Thanks Kevin. Yeah, this has been a rough stretch for Twitter. The clock seems to be ticking for them rather quickly. I hope they can pull it together soon.
May 29th, 2008 at 8:33 am
As long as Twitter actively works to grow and is open with the community about issues then I think you’ll see a low abandonment rate — well, as long as the services proves to be actually valuable (still in that fad stage as of now).
In nerd format: while($twitter!=$myspace){ $users=”happy”; } //hopefully Twitter won’t abandon their users