Twitter users are becoming more and more frustrated with outages and blips in service and look more and more willing to turn their words into action. This has never been more evident as of recently when discussions on FriendFeed have created a unified effort to get the attention of the Twitter community. As a result, Twit-Out was created. Twit-Out is (for a lack of a better term) a boycott of Twitter on Wednesday, May 21st. Read more about this on posts by Andrew Dobrow and Bwana McCall, even picked up on the Buzz Out Loud podcast.
Discussions have continued to flare up on FriendFeed.
I’ll be joining the Twit-Out on May 21 even though some people do think it’s nonsense. The main argument seems to be: "Why boycott a free service?" I’ll use an answer I’ve already used on FriendFeed:
“The ‘I don’t pay for it’ argument doesn’t really fly with me. I’ll complain if the bus driver doesn’t turn on the heat in the bus during winter. I’ll complain about the only weather radio station or the only TV news station that goes offline too often. Just because I don’t pay for it, doesn’t mean I have to put up with crappy service.”
What do I hope to achieve by participating?
1. Just being able to do something and let Twitter know that I care.
Yup, I care enough that I’ll join an organized boycott to let them know how much Twitter means to me, I’m hooked, as are many others. However, it’s also to let Twitter know that if they keep doing me wrong, I don’t have to stick around. We all know the impending monetization is coming; if you plan on cashing in on us when the time comes, do us right from now and don’t wait until it’s too late.
2. To big up FriendFeed
So guess where I go when Twitter goes down? Yup, FriendFeed. Why? Great conversations and awesome new content. I think a lot of people dissed FriendFeed early on when there wasn’t quite the user base there is now; so I’m hoping folks will check it out again and see how it is now. Comments and ‘likes’ are jumping, ideas are being exchanged and conversations have taken a whole new turn.
I don’t expect this will change the Twitter servers, and don’t expect a significant amount of the Twitterverse to participate. But I do hope the folks at Twitter take a closer look at the community and figure things out. Yes, no doubt they are working at it, but how long are we going to just roll over on this? Just being able to do something makes me feel better about it. Believe it or not, some feel a little more passionate than me and threaten to leave Twitter for good until their issues are fixed. Jason’s reasoning: does it make sense to rely on an unreliable service?
What do you think, will you participate? Why?
Any other ideas of what we can do besides whine? Or is Twitter not that important to you?
Twit-Out: 24-Hour Twitter Boycott Tags: friendfeed, twitter
On FriendFeed, this post was liked by 1 person and commented on 3 times 
Ok, but what about the mobile cell users?
I don’t think I’ll participate because I don’t really see the point. I think they know it’s a problem and are doing everything they can. So I don’t see that a boycott would be letting them know anything they don’t *already* know.
I know that, I don’t think anyone thinks they aren’t working on it. But like I said for me, Its my way of saying:
Look Twitter is great and all, but it won’t be the last microblogging platform around. When the competition comes and they can offer a dependable service; my loyalty to Twitter will decide whether I switch or not.
That measure of loyalty gets smaller with each outage.
I’m pretty sure there’s a FriendFeed app for the iPhone, if you’ll be going to FriendFeed and if you have an iPhone.
Twitter has changed architectures and revamped their design team, so yeah they’re doing “stuff”. Twitter does a terrible job of communicating with its users. Everyone knows this. It’s an unwritten law that comes with signing up with Twitter: Thou shalt ignore Twitter downtime because we say so. Other services don’t do this. They communicate. They tell you why. They apologize. Twitter shuns its users yet we still love it.
I feel complaining does absolutely nothing if Twitter won’t listen. I feel taking action will get more people talking and actually doing something. No more “omg twitter is down, what do I do now”, but more like, “ok, Twitter is down, I don’t care because FriendFeed is where I spend the most time”. It’s an exercise that will hopefully educate and demonstrate to others that Twitter is not all there is. We’ve become complacent and lazy in our Twitterverse and won’t try anything else for more than 20 minutes, but will settle for crappy service.
When’s the last time Twitter added a new feature? Improved the service? Fixed issues? If anything they’re tightening API calls, restricting clients, and rotting in a world of complacence. I love what Twitter brings, but taking the time to exercise my energy towards something else has shown me, I can definitely live without it.
It is possible to access FriendFeed via a mobile phone via the MojiPage FriendFeed widget. However, in my experience, you can’t do as much as you can with a mobile Twitter client such as Slandr. See the first bullet in this post, which discusses my concerns about mobile access.
Exactly my concerns. Scoble says he can comment using both his N95 and iPhone but I can’t with Pocket IE, NetFront or Opera on my Windows Mobile. I’ve put a poll up on FF.
Here the link to your poll:
http://friendfeed.com/e/075b490c-f723-421a-805c...
Might help
Sounds promising then. I don’t have a cell smart enough to do so but I was just wondering…
The main thing I want to do with this is to show FriendFeed as a viable, if not better, alternative to Twitter.
They can definitely improve the service, but added features aren’t always necessary, it’s twitter’s simplicity that is it’s strength. If feature’s were that important, jaiku and pownce would probably have a larger following.
Ugh, Disqus is broken on latest firefox. Sorry for dummy post. It’s ok to delete this.
Here’s a feature: “We’ve increased the API limit from 70 requests/hour to 200 requests/hour” Features are important and necessary. The scope of the feature is what keeps and enhances simplicity. Features don’t have to be things like comment support, or term tracking, hashtag support, etc etc. Twitter is stagnant and if anything they’re moving backwards considering the changes in personnel. (Lead architect, etc)
Yet, we still love it.
Twitter has added a number of incremental features over time. The Reply Tab was something that came out of the community’s use. The location of the reply arrow and the favorites marker has changed. I would dare say they are making improvements because of how we use it – and NOT using the service will provide them even less information.
Or maybe this is just a ploy from Ev and Biz to cut down on the amount of traffic for a day, so there will be less carping when they DO change infrastructure on the 21st.
(For what it’s worth, Twitter’s downtime is FAR less in 2008 than 2007, when you do a month-to-month comparison.)
I’m not an API code-jockey, but the ones I have talked with marvel at the hooks and the continued development of the Twitter API. The “added features” are the things that allow a Snitter and a Twhirl to emerge from nowhere and enhance the service. Twitter isn’t growing by doing everything itself, it is fostering competition among third-parties. Brilliant.
I’ve decided to participate here at the last minute…must fight the urge to not check my iPhone all the time.
Nice! Feel free to join us on http://friendfeed.com
Currently, there’s no FriendFeed iPhone app (sadly). I’ve been dying for one for weeks now.
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