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I’m Breaking Up with Twitter

Ever since I came back from vacation, Twitter has barely been functioning. At this point, it seems I have a better chance at winning the lottery than prediction if I can actually log into the service; sometimes I can log in on the site, but then Snitter might be locked out; sometimes parts of the site are down, but others work; and too often now, it just doesn’t seem to be worth the hassle anymore.

It’s great that the folks at Twitter are starting to communicate with us, but I find it harder and harder to get myself to use Twitter anymore.

Besides the downtime – with the advent of FriendFeed – the discussions on Twitter just aren’t that interesting to me anymore. I can react to other’s posts faster and in more depth on FriendFeed without having to bother with the time delay on Twitter and I reach roughly the same audience.

For the time being, I will keep announcing posts on Twitter (I use a WP plugin for that anyway), but otherwise, I will be spending my time on FriendFeed and won’t be posting to Twitter (except through FriendFeed if a discussion around a Twitter item comes up).

Maybe over time, Twitter will get their act together, but by that time, I think a lot of us will have moved on.

(If you want to follow me on FriendFeed – you can find me here)

Update: This new cartoon from Gapingvoid seems to fit in here quite nicely:

That's all well and good but what will replace your Twitter channel – FriendFeed ?

I finally voted with my feet and am now using Jaiku (and blissfully happy – it's the honeymoon period you see .

I don't want to contaiminate my FF 'Share An Item' with my Twitter 140 character stream of continuous, partial, drivel.

If I use Jaiku, FF people can easily hide that stream.

Just fixed a Freudian slip – 'FriedFeed'

Without Disqus, this would not have been possible.,

Good call, IMO. Even though I haven't formally announced it, I've been completely off Twitter since last Thursday. Sometimes, at home, I pull up Twhirl but the spark just isn't there anymore..

Not quite.. there are WP plugins that threading and editing a post after it has been committed. But by default, correct.

I have been playing with the Twitter clones as well, but I am actually
thinking about mostly using FriendFeed's Share feature – let's see how it
works out. I never updated Twitter too often anyway, so I think (hope?) my
noise level is going to be low…

Yup. There are those that 'talk' and those that 'walk'.

I'm getting close to that point as well .. the ride is just getting too rough for me at this point.

have to admit i'm thinking about it as well

It's tempting to write of my disppointment with Twitter.

Instead, I'd like to say a big Thank You to Ev, Jack, Biz, Blaine and everyone who created and runs (or ran) Twitter.

Even when Twitter is down, it's better than many sites when they are up.

DN

I came here via a FriendFeed link.

Sign of the times methinks.

This reminds me of the great “Breakup with Facebook” backlash last December. Many people left. Most people stayed. Another service settles into its niche. All Internet services seem to follow this pattern.

[...] Hugh McLeod’s latest GapingVoid cartoon probably sums up what many Twitter users have been thinking of late. The service, which hasn’t exactly been known for its reliable uptime, has been effectively crippled for almost a week now, with no ability to page back through previous messages and no support for using it through instant messaging. For many Twitter users, including me, the inability to see previous messages makes the service effectively useless, since the only messages you see are the ones that happen to be there when you look at the site, or @ replies sent directly to you. Some people are giving up. [...]

Agreed.totally. While Twitter is “communicating. its still basically nothing. hell no updates on when IM will be back online (was suppose to be friday evening, or the older figure (yet biz finds time to blog about apps for twitter). Plus I had to find from a second hand source that the API was lowered (did the official blog mention this?). I don't care what they promis, it apparent, a pack of monkeys could run a service better

Yeah this has been playing on my mind a bit. I want to use another service for my Tweets. Jaiku seems equally unreliable and Pownce is difficult to post to. I suppose I could just use FriendFeed, but I still think it's worth using a service external to FF to do this.

[...] my own problems, and I am sure many others, The Last Podcast talks about quitting Twitter. I have to admit, using anything that isn’t stable online makes [...]