All Twittered Out
I have been using Twitter on and off for several months. Some of the time the service works, the remainder of the time I am reliably informed that "Something is technically wrong." Currently, Twitter is the only web based application I use on a regular basis which breaks just as regularly as I use it.
If Twitter provided an important service, email for example, I would have stopped using it in favour of something more reliable; however, arguably, Twitter does not provide an important service, so I have persevered with its less than reliable service, though I have to admit, my patience is wearing thin.
Should not the Twitter experience be fun?
For me, Twitter has stopped being a fun distraction and has become something which I like to do, but more often than not, I end up feeling frustrated when I do. Problem is, I have become comfortable with keeping a virtual diary of day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute distractions. I also enjoy the sporadic conversations which occur between mutual followers.
Do not misunderstand me, I think the basis of the Twitter service, "What are you doing?", is valid and simple enough to remain being a great idea; however, for fear of stating the obvious, I do not think the Twitter service is currently scaling well enough to cope with the digital populace. And more worryingly [at least for the Twitter developers], I am not sure it ever will, not in its current guise and regardless of the underlying technologies.
Ah b∗ll∗cks!
Also, there is something which has been bugging me about Twitter, the fact that it is hosting my data. The data in question, may on the surface seem unimportant, and for the large part it is; however, on occasion I have found myself wanting needing to refer to my backlog of tweets, only to find the Twitter service lacking, again.
As an example, only the other day, Becky and I wanted to watch an episode of a certain serial drama and neither of us could remember the last episode we had watched. Ah ha! I thought, I will search my Twitter history, I am sure to have tweeted about it. The following conversation went something like:
me: Ah b∗ll∗cks!
Becky: What's wrong?
me: Something technical!
If I was hosting the tweets myself, I feel certain the above short conversation would never have taken place. I would have been able to search my data, find the information I needed and carry on with my otherwise happy existence.
What are you doing?
I am feeling all Twittered out, not with the concept, but with the service. I am going to rectify this by developing my own mini Twitteresque application. The application will provide similar functionality to Twitter, but obviously it will be served from my own hosting account. The application will store my tweets within its own database as well as pushing them to Twitter. Ideally, once the application is running, nobody, apart from myself, should notice any difference as it will appear as though I am Twittering as normal.
Thank you Twitter
Twitter got me hooked on keeping a diary of meaningless events, but then left me wanting. So, thank you Twitter, I now have a new project to keep me amused for a while.
End rant. Start project.
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