If you follow me on Twitter, or heck, if you use Twitter at all, you know that they’ve been experiencing things that are “technically wrong”. Now, perhaps this was intentional on their part to show off the new error message, but they’re really starting to push the limit on what’s acceptable for down time.
Customer Service Went First
I keep my profile on Twitter protected. Not so much because I don’t want people following what I say (I do) or because I have things to hide (I don’t) but simply because if I don’t protect my profile, my Twitter page jumps to the top of Google and out-ranks my own web site. That, for some reason, bothers me. I’d like to see Twitter implement a “no index” option, so I can keep my profile public but not have it show up in Google, but alas, that’s likely a dream.
Nearly 3 weeks ago (Jan 14th, to be exact) I noticed that when I clicked on the friend request link on the side I received an error. I emailed support about it. I received an answer on the 16th stating that it was a bug, they were aware of it, and were working on a fix. I replied on the 20th looking for a workaround as I saw the number of requests grow from 1 to 5 to 8 to 11. Nothing. I emailed again on the 28th, now at 14 people. Nothing. I’m over 20 requests now. No word from support. No workaround. Still broken.
Ready To Move On
After the issues I’ve had with support, and now with the large amount of downtime – I’m ready to pack it in. Permanently. I won’t, yet, because Twitter currently provides much too much value to me to abandon it. It sounds though, to me, like the sentiments throughout the Twitter community are starting to sway the same way. If they pass that all-too-famous tipping point, I think Twitter will be looking at a mass exodus.
And hey – maybe that’ll help with the stability issues.
Tommy Vallier helps groups, individuals and businesses understand how social media tools can be used to their fullest. He is also a community builder and web developer living in Kingston, Ontario.