If you don’t own stake in a tech company, work in media or live close to a downtown metropolitan area, you are excused from thinking that Twitter is an over-hyped leftover curiosity from the now retreating mobile phone Short Message System era. Seriously, what the hell is the point of “tweeting” text when you are no longer bound by SMS’s arbitrary character limit or lack of graphics? Anyone with a slightly smart phone (soon to be just about everyone) has access to MMS or robust social media applications.
I stopped using Twitter for anything in October after Facebook did some heavy updates to its Blackberry application, eliminating my desire to use the lightweight Twitter app for quick Facebook updates. Despite some excellent content finally appearing on the service (Fake AP Stylebook, Shit My Dad Says and Time Lost Batman), I was done with the whole concept. I uninstalled the Twitter app from my Facebook account, locked down the Twitter account and walked away. The only thing that has been appearing on my Twitter feed since then are the update notices sent out by this WordPress blog.
However, as I’ve been helping The Redhead update her blog and Etsy store over the last two days, I’ve reluctantly returned to Twitter to see how it has changed. Overall, it’s slightly less worthless than it used to be. Site performance has definitely improved, although it is after the holidays. I like the retweet button, the local trending topic sidebar and the lists function…but where the hell are simple things like Twitpic integration?
Facebook made massive design and privacy changes to its site to head off the slightest advantage that Twitter might gain from its freewheeling, open-door nature, but Twitter has done little to integrate the Frankenstein’s monster of off-site services that make its system even remotely competitive. Where can I find a comprehensive list of popular off site Twitter apps? How about an automatically scrolling list of tweets, saving me from having to refresh the static site for the latest? This is basic, basic stuff that hundreds of other web noodlers and ne’er-do-wells have cobbled together over the last few months, but they are not reflected in Twitter’s web site, the first place people go when their friends finally harass them into using the service.
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