A key feature of Twitter has been down most of this week: Replies. The core Twitter service itself is alive, but the team took the Reply feature down on Tuesday when the service started to slow. As of now, Friday afternoon, Replies are still down.
Disabling certain features is Twitter’s recent attempt to keep their frail architecture from failing completely. They tried it out during Apple’s recent WWDC keynote and it worked, so they’re clearly using this approach more often now to deal with problems.
But here’s the problem – Replies was the wrong feature to turn off (whether there was a choice in the matter or not). The beautiful thing about Twitter is that spontaneous, diverse conversations erupt that are almost synchronous, or chat like (see our post about Quotably, which pulls these conversations out and highlights them). Conversations are what makes Twitter magic.
But that magic is created by the simple Reply feature – when you add “@TechCrunch” to a Twitter message, it tells me you are saying something directly to me, to start a new conversation or reply to an existing one. Without Reply, Twitter turns into a one way telephone conversation. Pulling the feature out is equivalent to a frontal lobotomy – Twitter is still walking around, but there’s a blank stare in its eyes.
So why aren’t people screaming about the feature being gone? Because this time, they’re just heading over to Friendfeed to have those very same conversations. Friendfeed for most users was just a place to bookmarks all their activities on other social networks. Now, more and more, it’s a place that people start conversations. The early adopters got that a while ago. Now, the not so early adopters are using it as a Twitter replacement, too.
This message, for example, is one that I would have written to Twitter if the Reply feature was working. Instead I posted it to Friendfeed, and the conversation picked up without a hitch.
If I was Twitter I’d be very worried about Friendfeed. Their young competitor seems to have zero stability problems, and is quietly in the process of pulling away all the special parts of Twitter.
Twitter was mentioned on yesterday’s Daily Show (at about the 10:00 mark). Let’s all hope that when we look back, that mention by Jon Stewart didn’t mark Twitter’s peak, just as Friendfeed ascended.
https://node12.cvsdude.com/
CVSdude.com is down. The home page is still up but all Subversion repositories are down.
This is worse than Twitter because a bunch of programmers are now locked out of their web projects
“If the theater owners don’t start bringing us the movies we want all the time, and offering them when we want them, we’ll all switch to VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray!! and then they’ll be sorry!!”
Twitter is good at what it’s good at.
The UI is easy. It has customization for looks/colors. It has a bio. It shows you quickly who you are following, who follows you and how many of each there are. (When it’s working) it has the @replies feature, tracking, and good linking. You don’t have to slog thru more than 140 chars of someone else’s brilliance at a time.
FriendFeed is good at what it’s good at.
It doesn’t go down. The text limit is higher. There’s more than just one source of information. You can see a whole conversation including the comments of those you don’t follow without having to see every conversation of theirs. You can aggregate other information for your followers.
But they both have their flaws too. For Twitter it has been stability and reliability predominantly. Add to that a horrible relationship between the company & its users (hint: no, they aren’t even close to good customer communication) and the recent ‘let’s get rid of these features you rely on’ and it’s a nightmare. For Friendfeed, it’s the horrible design, awful user interface, no bios, no ability to see or easily control follower/ings, and a response to raised issues of “we’re aware of that thanks – maybe we’ll fix it down the road” unless you’re Scoble asking for it.
Home Movies (even HBO) didn’t kill Movie Theaters. FriendFeed won’t kill Twitter.
But Twitter might just kill Twitter – if they keep stabbing themselves repeatedly like they have been.
I think you might have been out of loop here, mike (or lack of research). uhm moving to friendfeed? more like moving to plurk. Here, even with a traffic graph to back it up http://trends.g...=all&sort=0
Plurk is being talked about like a hot pancake right now in summize and twitterati.
Twitter should stop blackhats.It is the base of spammer now,isn’t it.
A key feature of Techcrunch has been down most of this week: articles about shit that is cool. The core Techcrunch service itself is alive, but the team took the “write about cool shit” feature down on Tuesday when the number of visitors commenting and saying”nobody cares about this shit” started to slow. As of now, Friday afternoon, “write about cool shit” is still down.
Disabling certain features is Techcrunch’s recent attempt to keep their commenters focused on meta-commenting – that is, commenting about the circumstances around the article’s publication rather than the content of the article itself. They tried it out during Apple’s recent WWDC keynote and it worked, so they’re clearly using this approach more often now to deal with problems.
But here’s the problem – Writing about cool shit was the wrong feature to turn off (whether there was a choice in the matter or not). The beautiful thing about Techcrunch is that spontaneous, diverse comments erupt that are perfectly synchronous, or chat like (see our post about gilltots, who pulls these conversations out and highlights them). Conversations are what makes Techcrunch magic.
But that magic is created by the simple Write about cool shit feature – when you add a comment to a Techcrunch post, it tells me you are saying something directly to me, to start a new conversation or reply to an existing one. Without writing about cool shit, Techcrunch turns into a one way telephone conversation. Pulling the feature out is equivalent to a frontal lobotomy – Techcrunch is still walking around, but there’s a blank stare in its eyes.
So why aren’t people screaming about the feature being gone? Because this time, they’re just heading over to Gizmodo/Engadget/Valleywag/BoingBoing/whatevah to have those very same conversations. Gizmodo/Engadget/Valleywag/BoingBoing/whatevah for most users was just a place to read crappy posts and not leave comments. Now, more and more, it’s a place that people start conversations. The early adopters got that a while ago. Now, the not so early adopters are using it as a Techcrunch replacement, too.
This message, for example, is one that I would have written to Techcrunch if the Write about cool shit feature was working. Instead I posted it to Slashdot, and the conversation picked up without a hitch, even though all my posts got modded down.
If I were Techcrunch I’d be very worried about Gizmodo/Engadget/Valleywag/BoingBoing/whatevah. Their young competitors seem to have zero stability problems, and are quietly in the process of pulling away all the special parts of Techcrunch.
Techcrunch was mentioned on yesterday’s crappy local FOX news affiliate (at about the 10:00 mark). Let’s all hope that when we look back, that mention by Joe Reporter guy didn’t mark Techcrunch’s peak, just as some other blog ascended.
miked – yeah, i’m not loving plurk yet. perhaps it will come, but i doubt it.
Since it’s still tough to leave Twitter, join me and wave the Fail Whale flag proudly http://twitter....tuses/845061911
MikeD, the A-Listers missed the boat on Plurk, so they are ignoring it to focus on Friendfeed. If any thread on Friendfeed gets 50 replies, every A-Lister on Twitter passes it around as if it’s the most amazing thing ever.
While threads on Plurk get that many replies in 15 mins, and 300+ reply threads are fairly common.
the picture tells the story ,,,,,
Here here for FriendFeed. Nowadays I’m not even sure where I should be commenting. FriendFeed is aiming to solve that problem, yet also adds to the chaos.
On another note, Hey Michael, perhaps you should add in the comments at the end of each post that come from FriendFeed… afterall, they have a nice API where you can dig that information out easily. Here’s your feed right here:
http://friendfe...mp;service=blog
I don’t get it! Why is there such a big deal about Twitter? Most phones will have 3G Internet (unlimited data) pretty soon with a pretty affordable rate – so, honestly, I don’t really understand the real purpose of a freaking SMS twitter message. You know, it’s time to move on – SMS is a dying breed.
Mike – ah so that explains a lot. It’s all about who you love. This is your ‘personal’ blog after all.
So instead of being neutral and lay out all the cards on the table for an unbiased analysis of the whole situation, you just sort of decided that ‘Users Simply Move To Friendfeed’ because you ‘love’ friendfeed.
Blog is journalism, hooray ^^.
I wonder what happened in the picture.
http://easysumm...y.blogspot.com/
I really can’t understand how with 20.4 M$ they don’t get things to work.
even with the worst software they could just add hardware to solve this mess.
it’s ridiculous that they can’t handle that traffic with -again- 20.4M$
@16 the video is so fricking funny thanks for the laff
Quote of the day:
“The next time someone asks me “What’s Twitter?” I’m going to say “It’s a photo of a whale.”
-Brian Shaler, Twitter/Plurk User – http://twitter.com/brianshaler
Found here: http://www.plurk.com/p/t4eo
I await your complaints about the performance issues that Friendfeed has in the coming months when its the ‘next hot thing’.
“Friendfeed”, Michael? Are you sure you don’t mean “Plurk”?
Awesome photo. @1 complains of the mass updating, but that’s what blogging is all about. It would be a shame to replace Twitter with an exclusive service.
winer you’re an idiot. it has cluttered conversation there. plurk is much better for that but the a.listers don’t give a shit so no one should.
the only problem that i have on FF is that NO ONE is the slightest bit interested in striking up convo with mi. the randomness of twitter is what im used to. especially since im not an interesting person!
Plurk is where the majority of my friends have been heading it seems as well. None of them are uber-techie people either.
I’m seeing people use FriendFeed more as an consolidation of multiple activity streams into their Facebook account, not as a tweet substitute.
Oh well if you say friendfeed is awesome, we should ALL go there!
FriendFeed is great if you have 5 friends. When you have several hundred it’s a cluster fuck.
I added this comment but it got stuck in moderation because I had two links in it. I removed one.
Quote of the day:
“The next time someone asks me “What’s Twitter?” I’m going to say “It’s a photo of a whale.”
-Brian Shaler, Twitter/Plurk User
Found here: http://www.plurk.com/p/t4eo
@73 Scott K, Is that to say that, in a way, twitter is like goatse?
Chris said…
2005 when I made my original social networking software
What? Chris I didn’t know that you were in to writing useless social networking software for suckers/naives/vain ?
By the way, did you develop data-mining algorithm into your useless social networking software? If you had read what Ron Kohavi (former Amazon head of data-mining) published , then you would know how to use data-mining techniques in your useless ME TOO social networking software.
Plurk seems to be kinda of silly (and we all know where they got the idea).
Plurk has no SMS shortcode (that I can find).
Plurk has doesn’t have an API!
I like SMS, I don’t want a “smartphone” or 3G data (def not GPS).
Where is the photo from?
if these Twitter asshats don’t get their sh*t together stat, i’m gonna fly to san francisco and personally shove MuleSource up their asses. f****in nincompoops. these guys make George W. Bush look competent. seriously – how do u show your face if you either:
a) work at Twitterdown, or
b) still use Twitterdown?
as for that stupid video – i can’t say i’m all that surprised that some TC readers would actually think that was real, or funny – but you guys are really outdoing yourselves.
seriously, though – what is wrong with you people?
i know that 16 years of American schooling causes extraordinary levels of indoctrination – a near-complete destruction of the ability to think clearly, analytically, independently – all while pumping up the self-delusion that one is _more_ capable of such things – but i’m really starting to get scared, here.
damn. just forget it. maybe twitter has made you stupid.
Great picture!
Earlier today I decided I had had enough of twitter and deleted my account. Trying to build a network there was like building a house on quicksand.
…i could give a rat’s ass about Twitter. what’s the hell is going on in the picture!?
Recently twitter had received a huge funding…many of us had thought that may be they will use it for the betterment of twitter. But so far nothing has changed. I personally feel that people would now be switching over to friendfeed and plurk.
@Joe – speaking as someone who’s thousands of miles from the Valley and never really been involved in the Valley and uses both Twitter and FriendFeed…
You’re wrong
Plenty of people all over the world are using Twitter and FriendFeed for non-Valley related stuff
@24 # Mathew Spolin
“I’d like FriendFeed a lot more if I could block people. Certain spammy types are constantly polluting the conversation with their every fleeting notion. On twitter one can just choose not to follow them to keep the noise down. The way FF considerately shows friend-of-a-friend posts makes it impossible to get away from these people on their service.”
I don’t know how I respond to you without holding your hand and acting like you are a 4 year old. You can block people (not follow them) and you CAN stop seeing the friends-of-a-friends posts. This is the first thing I turned off on FriendFeed and its not _that_ difficult to figure out how to do it. Although better documentation is needed you can just google how to block friend-of-friend feeds on friendfeed. It is easy to tell you how to do but I’d rather you go through the entire process of actually taking 3 minutes to figure it out on your own.
I sometimes think I’m the only one that uses Twitter solely as a true life stream and not as a chat application. I have nearly 1,000 tweets and like 100 followers and I have never replied or followed anyone else other than one friend since I started on Twitter.
I am still not loving friendfeed just yet. I hate the interface.
Also whats with this BS Silicon Valley vs the world rubbish. Some respected people getting involved in it and making them look like they live in a bubble.
Where do we buy Fail Whale T Shirts, I wants one!
Twitter’s killer USP is the size of its comms market – go anywhere else and who is home?
I “get” the frustration with Twitter, but thats a scaling issue brought about by (i) its own success and (ii) an initial design flaw in that it wasn’t designed as a comms system initially. Friendfeed is one of many alternatives, and it has all sorts of issues of its own. Imho, and as others note, Summize does a better job.
http://tinyurl.com/3s4uvs enough said
Sorry…not Twittter related.
Anyone know who owns the traffic jam image? I’d like it for a presentation I’m giving.
(or I’d be happy with any image that shows people shying away from the road ahead!)
Check out those figures: http://siteanal....com/?metric=uv
Since March 08 Twitter has gained 700,000 users when Friendfeed has added 100,000. Don’t get the point about Friendfeed beating Twitter. Sorry but Friendfeed is overwhelming and mostly for heavy users of the internet. Never be mainstream in my opinion.
People were going to make the full transition to FriendFeed (or another service) at some point..
But what surprises me is how much people are hating on Twitter. Before FriendFeed, wasn’t Twitter a pretty big thing? Sure, it had it’s flaws, but without a Twitter to fail.. don’t think there’d really be a FriendFeed to succeed..
Talk about a traffic jam
LOL
Funny, I’ve been using Twitter’s reply feature all this week with absolutely no problems at all. Honestly. Weird.
Prediction. Within one year FriendFeed will have more traffic than Twitter.
Looking at the spontaneous conversation mentioned in MA’s posting and it’s just as useless as Twitter has always been — likely the most boring thing I’ve ever seen — it took time from my life, dammit. These are truly time-waster applications. Yeah, yeah, so we get reports from China when there’s an earthquake “proving” the model goes beyond Arrington’s dog. And time-wasters can make a lot of money — YouTube, MySpace, etc. But it’s still just, well, not that interesting — it’s tech culture masturbation at best.
I want to know more about that traffic jam picture. Why is everyone turning around?
Yeah, i do agree with one thing here. The traffic jam. This is Arrington’s new talent; finding a perfect illustration for his post.
Ladies and gent, please help me in welcoming; “TalentCrunch”.