My Twitter Cycle

With apologies to CogDog,

It’s been fun, but for me, my experiment with Twitter is done. I tried briefly to encourage a mass migration of Twitter pals to Jaiku, but didn’t have the social mojo to accomplish it, and in truth, it didn’t appeal to me that much – too “busy,” not as simple and clean as Twitter, and as everyone pointed out, relatively empty of users.

It’s too bad, the experiment was fun, I really enjoyed the daily interaction with old friends like CogDog, D’Arcy and Brian and making new ones with Bryan, Jim, Gardner and others, but at the end of the day I have no affection for flaky apps that leave me feeling like I’m the one with the problem instead of just plain breaking (which at least you know was the apps fault). So goodbye Twitter, it’s been nice to know yah. And hopefully this won’t render me persona non grata with the Twitterati. – SWL

16 thoughts on “My Twitter Cycle”

  1. I will miss you too… Twitter’s problems are annoying, but I have a hard time thinking of an online service (except google, and then only search) that hasn’t had similar growing pains. I laboriously blogged that point for you twittophphobes 🙂

    Maybe you will decide to come back for scintillating tidbits like my eating of chocolate cake, etc. Not sure how you are living without that, personally!

  2. I know you’re not fishing for folks to say “please oh please come back,” but please oh please come back. I fixed the problem of my messed-up friend/follower database (what did Twitter do to me?) by putting all my updates on the public timeline again. Why not? I’ll not be arranging choreographed illicitness on Twitter, anyway. And I’m digging Twitter for all the reasons you cited–and being very frustrated for all the reasons you cited–but digging it less with you not in the mix.

    Second Life used to make me gnash my teeth. Still does at times. Catch SL at the wrong moment and the colleague I’m encouraging to try it out will run screaming from the room. The same things have happened with just about every bootstrapped, cash-poor startup I’ve encountered. If Twitter is still behaving this way in a month, I’ll say adios too. But right now, it’s the best thing going and has the best chance of mattering to me for at least the short term. Jaiku is like a poorly mastered CD played too loud. Twitter is a shambling wreck sometimes, but it has a homespun charm and looks much less money-centered (sure, that may be why the servers lack sysops).

    But my main argument here is that Twitter would be much cooler for me if you were still around, so I could get to know you better and tap into your expertise, sensibilities, and wonderfully apt surname. A Hammond B-3 is a finicky, heavy beast, but there’s no substitute for that sound through a Leslie….

  3. Hee, nice artistic mashup on the graph, though I think your negative slope is steeper.

    I don’t really depend much on twitter except to energize me, and have never really had anything profound to post that I could not re-iterate, or shrug off and say FU to the technology.

    Maybe Web 3.0 should be “Web 2.0 Stuff that Works”?

    No criticisms from me on a note of departure, nor pleas to return, I know where you live 😉

  4. Hey, sorry to not have replied back sooner, but I actually went an entire weekend without going online! Amazing what not twitter’ing did for my real life offline 😉

    I really appreciate these comments, especially Gardner’s. I am going to give it a few weeks. If after a few weeks I check back and you all are still twittering away and can attest to the improvements in uptime twitter has made, then maybe I’ll slink back, trying to keep my tail out from betwixt my legs. We’ll see. That’s the tough part of this decision, it wasn’t about the people or the content at all; Alan’s original graph was absolutely accurate and I quickly became a convert, looking forward daily (hourly? minutely?) to finding out more about my extended colleagues’ thoughts and happenings.

    I think it was Chris who wondered about my comment about feeling like Twitter’s failings were my own; specifically what I was referring to was its habit, as an Ajax app, to appear to post twits but then to simply gobble them up. This behaviour was near identical to successfully posting a twit (often times my screen would not refresh even when I had been successful). This is a specific usability thing about this type of interface but it really amplified my own frustrations with Twitter; I’d personally much rather it simply borked and let me know that it had, rather than seemingly work but instead gobble all my entries into its invisible belly-full of banality.

    Anyways, I really do appreciate the comments and am glad it is clear that my reasons for abandoning Twitter are all about my frustrations and lack of patience with it, not any of you, and look forward to continue conversations in all the different places we show up. Cheers, Scott

  5. Ah, well that explanation of guilt is much less psychologically thought provoking 🙂 I post mostly with a desktop app and FFX widgets which don’t seem to suffer from the same “looks like it posted but it’s just screwing with your head” syndrome as the web interface. That WOULD be annoying.

    Regardless, you will always be a member of the Chriserati (a small group, not to be confused with the rapturous Christerati of which your membership is your own business 🙂

  6. You realize that in Internet time, checking in a few weeks is like saying you’ll pop by in the 2020s? By that time Jim’s revolution will be complete and you’ll find him spirited around in a sedan chair by the faithful, Brian will be started Lambapalooza for his alternative hippy friends… heck, I’ll probably even be listening to country music!

  7. Chris, I know, I know, in a few weeks you’ll all be wondering “sleslie, who the hell is that?” Hopefully Brian will at least invite me to Lambapalooza, I live on the West Coast too and have a cupboard-full of nutritional yeast and tofu to prove it too!

  8. Scott has a lifetime pass to all future Lambapaloozas, though you can be certain some poor animal’s flesh will be grilled during the festivities.

    Chris, I’d be happy to throw all sorts of fantastic (to me at least) country music should you ever have the itch. I can’t imagine life without ole Hank, Willie, Goober, Townes Van Zandt, Commander Cody…

  9. I like your style, Scott! We just gotta find some alternative vehicle (preferably one that runs!) to talk about PJ Harvey shows.

    Also, I love your comment on D’Arcy’s post on twitter/blogging conversations, nothing short of genius. As they say in The Prisoner, “Be seeing you!” Or, maybe it’s “be looking for you”?

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