Since Twit-Out was announced there has been a lot of feedback via FriendFeed, Twitter, and several other places. The reaction has been mixed, but a lot of people don’t seem to get it.
They don’t seem to get that things don’t work the way the used to. One of the big implications of Web 2.0 is that the control of the conversation has shifted to the community, not the enterprise behind it. So when I say that I’m going to take my conversation somewhere else for a day (see my reasons here), why is it that I’m a moron for doing so?
Jennifer Leggio argues that "disbanding the community" isn’t going to work. Disbanding may be a over-the-top term to use; but either way I think she and others are missing the point. No one is thinking that this is going to hurt Twitter in anyway and no one wants to hurt Twitter. I don’t expect everyone or even a significant amount of Twitter folk to join in, only the heavy users are the ones who are really perturbed enough to join in on Twit-Out. One of the things I want more than anything is for Twitter to realize that the technical problems may soon be dwarfed by the social problems. It’s in my own best interest that wherever I invest my conversation and build community should to allow me to get value from it on a reliable basis.
Now, based on how much you use Twitter, would you say it’s reliable? Some of us use Gmail A LOT. If Gmail were to go down as much as Twitter did, would your reaction be the same? Of course, Gmail has support and a place to go when things are awry, but it’s free, which means we shouldn’t do anything about it right? What would you do without Gmail, go back to Outlook, Hotmail, or Yahoo! Mail?
Our reliance on things like Twitter and Gmail for our community and email, respectively, has forced us to invest one of our most precious commodities: trust. Every time Twitter goes down, that trust gets a little smaller — and Twit-Out is how I’m going to demonstrate that to Twitter. It’s not about lashing back at them or throwing a tantrum; it’s about telling them before it’s too late that the outages are hurting the community more than they may realize.
So rather just whining and complaining I’ve joined a movement to try and accomplish something. That’s how I am. You don’t have to join me, like I said, I don’t expect a lot of people to do so. But you should know that my part of the conversation belongs to me. Those who complain about where I should comment/converse are wrong, wrong, wrong.
Tags: conversation, twitter
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