Twitter is actually quite awesome. For me, it’s the middle between IRC, MSN and text messaging. You can see it as public texting: say you want to go out, well you can tweet that and other twitterers read it and they can decide to join you. For me that works great, in a number of cases it even made sure I was aware of plans for going out early enough (I live far away from Amsterdam, I require a few hours notice for such things). So it’s texting, but then free and with multiple recipients. Mostly, that is what it does for me.
But there are a number of drawbacks, which I care about in various degrees. Let’s name some of them.
There’s a reason why a tweet is only 140 characters long. If you need to tell a story that’s over 140 characters, it doesn’t belong in a tweet. This is a statement I’ve heard all over, so I think I can cautiously say that it’s a general consensus. Some people decide to tweet three or more times about the same subject though, or they literally break their tweet with a ‘…’ and continue it after ‘…’ in the next tweet. To those people I’d like to say: get a blog.
Twitter is not quite MSN. That is, you can send each other @replies, but only direct messages are private. It doesn’t happen very often, but I sometimes catch an MSN-like conversation on Twitter. It makes me feel like some sort of intruder and that’s a ridiculous notion since these people choose to let the world see their conversation, but still. I can’t put a stop to it other than to unfollow them. I’ve considered it numerous times for some, but what about the stuff I do want to see? It’s a tough decision, and in the end I always choose to keep the users and view the useless tweets anyway. I’m curious and I like to see the rest of their scribbles, so what can I do. If Twitter sported an option that hides @replies for specific users to other users from my list, that would solve a big part of this issue.
And then there are the endless complaints. I have refrained from commenting on people’s Twitter behaviour up to the writing of this post, because how they use Twitter is their own choice, and if I’m really that annoyed about it, it’s up to me to unfollow/block them. However, others don’t seem to treat me that way. I’ve been completely bashed over retweeting a tweet with which you could win a prize. It’s spam, they argue, and spam is evil. I think there’s little difference between this and your average ad, but hey, sure, whatever. I can see their point, and even though I think it’s their responsibility to unfollow me if they’re bothered by it, I can adapt. No more spam it is.
But what I really don’t appreciate is getting bashed over posting something about my day. Getting into a long discussion because I posted one tweet was not what I imagined Twitter was going to do for me. The most agonising part of it is, people tell me I should unfollow them if I’m that annoyed, but those same people badger me about my tweets and they still follow me. As an added effect it makes me walk on eggshells, I hardly tweet anymore.
Then why haven’t I quit Twitter? Because I like the idea of knowing when people are going out, and sometimes I see/hear something funny I’d like to share. And of course, curiosity. And maybe I can win a prize! Oh no wait…