iamvinnie's dashboard

Thanks for the update, and so long Twitter. Gonna move onto a product that integrates all the necessary features and is a little more honest up-front. Maybe someday Twitter will be an option, but for now I'm moving to better pastures.

Hi guys, we've posted an official update about IM here:

http://status.twitter.com/

Sorry it took as long as it did.

I think it's most likely that the Twitter corporation has decided IM and Track are too valuable to let people use. They'll stonewall and delay until people give up and/or forget about it, at which point they'll re-introduce the features as paid "premium" services. Or so I predict.

Laconica, here I come...

I think it's becoming clearer that Twitter doesn't intend to bring IM support back, and is delaying announcing that for as long as possible.

If you are aware, then why does it take so much to get a real update? Team meetings? Consensus? Consulting some voodoo? I'm with scionguy below, I'm recommending the competitors for now (and I'm sad that it's come to this). – robotfrog, on October 02, 2008 20:28

I sure am glad I gave up on Twitter months ago when I could see they were lying about IM being a "top priority". For anyone still hanging on even though they have no plans to ever bring it back, the IM services at Pownce (and any other Twitter competitor) work just fine and their customer service doesn't suck like Twitter's.

Have you tried pownce?

Thanks Crystal. It's not the update we'd all like to hear but it's something. Looking forward to further official updates. – iamvinnie, on October 01, 2008 15:56

Thanks Crystal. It's not the update we'd all like to hear but it's something. Looking forward to further official updates. – iamvinnie, on October 01, 2008 15:56

I'm really sorry guys, but this is the best update I have for you right now :( The team is aware that you guys would really like an official update, and we plan to do it very soon. Thanks for being patient just a little bit longer!

I'm severely unimpressed by this. At one time, Twitter/IM was said to be "top priority" and other similar, er... statements. Then there was extreme silence (sparsely punctuated with "we're working on it"s every once in a great long while).

With the current statement specifying no time frame, I have to assume Twitter/IM has been severely downgraded in priority, presumably because the problems have been found to be insoluble within the current implementation.

If that's so, then I would honestly prefer to know this outright, and I'm sure a lot of other former Twitter/IM users would agree.

If not, then... what? Waiting for the site load to reduce somewhat, like Jason said three (!) months ago? Guess that's never gonna happen. To be honest, I'm very curious about this from a developer's perspective -- what has killed this outwardly simple (but obviously not really so) feature?

It's related.

This drives me crazy. When someone with protected updates follows me, even if I know who they are (e.g., author is a blogger whose work I enjoy, or even someone I know IRL), I might not want to follow them on Twitter. They might post 50 times in an hour about troubleshooting a technical issue (this is only slightly exaggerating a recent example from someone with protected updates whom I follow now), and even if they're otherwise profoundly fascinating people, that's going to drive me insane.

Having to submit a follow request to someone with protected updates without seeing them first seems akin to agreeing to a blind date. How much more embarrassing would it be to show up at such a date, and have to make excuses to leave after finally seeing the person and/or hearing them speak, than to, say, get to know them by correspondence and such in advance of agreeing to the date?

People get enough hurt feelings over being unfollowed when their updates are public. When they're private, and someone has gone through the extra step of requesting permission to follow them before unfollowing them later, the potential for hurt feelings is much greater.

I know people shouldn't have such thin skins, but the fact is, they do, and I hate hurting people's feelings. Not following someone whom you know in advance is going to bore you to tears (or offend or overwhelm you or whatever) is decidedly less awkward than following and later having to unfollow them.

Plus, it's inherently creepy to be followed by someone with protected updates. How do I know someone isn't a spammer or a vindictive stalker ex? (I've certainly dealt with enough of both.)

Please, can we have an alternative to this?

Crystal, we appreciate the 'update', however at the pace of official updates to IM in this thread, I suppose we can expect something in another 3 months? Removing references in the help documentation does avoid confusion, but isn't that like re-writing history? Patience is gone when months ago we were told to have patience that the problem was being worked on actively. – robotfrog, on September 27, 2008 13:40

why no time frame?

Hi guys, our apologies for the lack of an official update. At this point, we don't have a time frame for fixing IM. In the meantime, I have removed references from the help documentation to avoid confusion. We'll make an official update to let you know what our plans are in a more definitive way. Thanks for your patience in in the meantime.

It's been OVER 4 MONTHS. Even if IM is such a complex issue that it can't be solved and brought back up in 4 months, users should at least get an explanation of what's going on from Jack et al. And NO, the "Offline. Working on additional capacity" line on status.twitter.com is not communication.

What gives? There seems to be enough time to work on the election coverage, new layouts, etc. Why is IM being treated like a red-headed stepchild?