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Twitter Is Not A Reliable Enough Service To Build A Network Around

It had to be said, point blank. No more complaining. No more threatening to leave. No more “woe is me, I miss twitter” sobbing. Twitter Is Not A Reliable Enough Service To Build A Network Around.

I would think that the dream of any social network or web service provider would be to have it’s users adopt it enough to make it their browser start page, and strive to make that happen. Twitter ‘had’ that respect, from one user, until earlier today when I switched my computer on.

Twitter was offline. Not even it’s default error message would appear for me.

As I get back into the connected tech world online, I need to use services like Twitter to become even more connected. I need to be where the in-crowd hangs out online both for my own exposure and to see what’s happening in the industry at a moments notice. But the services I need have to be reliable, or they’re little more than useless.

A human being would die a quick death without air. It’s the most basic of needs. A site that wants to be anything to a user needs to have the most basic thing covered before it does anything else… it needs to at least ‘be there.’ And, Twitter can not seem to get that part of the equation right. Even with millions in funding, they can’t keep their site online with any real reliability.

Friendfeed.com is now my browser’s new start page. I’ll still use Twitter, when it’s online, but I won’t be putting any real work into building a network there, which sucks because I’ve put a lot of work into it already.

I know it’s a free service and I’ve heard others bitch and moan about those who bitch and moan about free services being unreliable, but come on, it’s been over a year, going on 2 that the service has been around. You’d think they’d have gotten their act together by now.

At any rate, here’s a link to my Friendfeed account. When twitter is online and I can actually use it, you’ll see links to my tweets there. Add me, follow me, friend me, whatever… Oxalon is plugged into the Friendfeed account as well as all my other online activity.

Posted: Tue 5.20.08 @ 7:33pm EST by Paul Short