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Twitter to IM: Drop Dead
by Steve Gillmor on October 11, 2008

It took a worldwide financial meltdown for Twitter to finally cough up the IM hairball. At BearHug Camp, I spent about 10 of the 30 minute executive visitation trying to pin down Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Alex Payne on when exactly Track and IM would be back, and in what order. Turns out the IM part isn’t coming back; it’s been moved from Broken to Build.

Evan Williams delivers the bad news with a refreshing frankness, suggesting the ROI of IM services for a small percentage of Twitter users puts it down the list below other more pressing priorities. And at the bottom of the email, he points at a fledgling third-party service that gives you a way of “tweeting” over the Jabber XMPP gateway. The author is mulling how to provide access to users’ follows. No mention is made of Track, of course.

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