antikewl's dashboard

I hope you don't mind my bumping this thread, but I was suprised to see a tweet from @trevypoos on my wife's 'home' timeline (since she follows him as well), but not mine! It kinda makes me wonder how many other tweets I've missed...

This is the tweet that never turned up, incidentally:

http://twitter.com/trevypoos/statuses...

It's not a reply.. it's simply not there (nor is it on my m.twitter.com feed)! I'm worried that I'm missing out on (a small percentage of) the fun!

i also have problems my network is vodafone pt. My confirmation code isnt't sent could't someone validate my phone number please.
my twitter username is thewor

for me, i can't even send updates via text!!! it stopped abruptly on Saturday!!
i don't think its my provider's problem because they show that the message has been sent!!

Thanks.

Bravo! You couldn't have said it any better !
"A lot of us would be a lot happier if Twitter could get the ON command to work from the Web." – eyes, on May 26, 2008 12:36

Haha! Yes, "faq-answer" is my tag. I didn't realize someone else had noticed it. I use it to quickly find threads that have replies that I know I'll need to link to in the future, when new users come in asking the same questions. 8-) – mdy, on May 24, 2008 13:23

Thanks, mdy! - hope my scrapings from trawling around endless topics on this issue will help a few users decide what to try and when they should just give up. - Someone has kindly tagged this topic (and a few others) "faq-answer", which should help in finding it. – Eridanus, on May 24, 2008 13:09

Fantastic summary! – mdy, on May 24, 2008 12:53

Thanks, Crystal and Jack!

Your *interim* reply is the most comprehensive and useful explanation I've discovered so far - though there is clearly still work for you all before SMS updates work as reliably as the various national providers permit.

As I currently understand it:

1. SMS updates are very easy to turn OFF, from wherever you like (Web, phone, ...).

2. Twitter automatically turns SMS updates OFF whenever one of their their SMS fails to trigger a prompt confirmation of delivery from your phone network, for any reason at all. Your mobile service provider may have a temporary problem, your phone's battery needs charging, your phone can't get a signal, it's busy reorganising its memory, or whatever.

3. When Twitter goes down, SMS updates will probably go OFF too - and may very occasionally (though more probably not) go back ON when Twitter returns.

4. The only way to turn SMS updates ON is to send a classical SMS from your phone to the relevant Twitter No. (the international No. +447624801423 in my case) - quite expensive for some people. I'm certainly not going to do THAT 30 times a month! Using a 3rd. party app. running on your phone isn't enough: Twitter wants a "genuine" SMS to confirm SMS is working for your phone.

This classical SMS needn't be an ON message: a normal 140-character update will tell Twitter that SMS is working on your phone and turn SMS updates ON (until the next hiccough turns it back OFF).

For what it's worth:
I sent ON (to +447624801423) yesterday, immediately received Twitter's SMS confirmation, and received all 9 expected SMS updates over the next few hours.
Today, however, I've received nothing (should have been 2 SMS so far) - result of last night's downtime? Or were SMS updates affected by this? :-

"Given an overflow of IM traffic, we're going to shut off IM services for the night while things recover. We'll keep you updated!"
[blog link: http://blog.twitter.com/2008/05/too-m...

5. For some people even this classical SMS isn't enough: they have to delete & re-register their phone to persuade SMS updates to work again for a few hours. This is risky, because sometimes a deleted phone won't re-register.

6. *** A lot of us would be a lot happier if Twitter could get the ON command to work from the Web. ***

7. Twitter could wait longer (e.g. two successive non-confirmations of delivery) before automatically turning SMS updates OFF. (Might be cumbersome to implement, though: introducing an extra database of pending c-of-d's with a counter for each user).

8. I'd really like to recommend Twitter to my friends - but at present this SMS problem makes Twitter just too fiddly for non-geeks to be bothered with.

mdy: Thanks for the tip. The one I spotted today was to someone I wasn't following so I've changed the setting, thanks :) However, I'm pretty sure that others have been absent recently without @user in at all, and from people I'm mutually following. I'll try and log them myself when I notice. Cheers. – Jon Tan, on May 21, 2008 12:18

Jon, are those missing @user messages by any chance addressed to people that you're not following yourself? If yes, that's the default setting for Twitter's @replies, i.e., "show me @replies addressed to the people I'm following". You can change the setting in http://twitter.com/account/notifications – mdy, on May 21, 2008 12:11

I'm also having this problem. Last noticed today, and most days to date. Cursory analysis seems to show that tweets from people I'm following starting with "@user" are not being shown in my /home.

[Ed] I should add, this is problematic to log comprehensively; if the tweets don't show I only notice when friends follow-on from a previous tweet, and I go to their page to investigate and compare.

To log this bug, it might be useful to have a tool that checks tweets from a given account are appearing in followers' streams, perhaps by timestamp.

I have the same problem ._.
I can send updates, and they show on twitter ok but I cannot recieve notifications.

I've tried sending ON and checking my settings to be on and all.. but nope, it still not working

not getting any updates. i haven't been getting them for days. it used to work alright the first time i added my mobile. today i removed the device and added it again. i can send twits without problems, but do not receive anything on the go.

omigod!!! I just got an update.... I don't want to get my hopes up but.... :)

Reporting my status... I got my sms updates back around 7th May after sending an sms update from my mobile phone and now they are delivered normally.

Others reported of sending 'on' sms to twitter via mobile phone and the sms update sprang back to life. Hope all of you will get sms updates back soon.

Still nothing... I'm getting kinda upset.. no one is responding here

seems to work again !

Twitter should fix this, for all users that reported having problems in this topic, by locking that stupid internal SMS-notification setting to 'on', while they're working on this problem... It is pretty clear that no-one, that replied here, is actually having signal problems -EVER- or have their phones turned off all the time..

What i would want most, is that -WE- also get access to that notification setting so that we can fix these problems ourselves -WITHOUT- having to text 'on' all the time... That scene is, however, probably an utopia; Twitter-crew members hardly reply to requests like mine. They probably have some pact with phone-providers; they earn a lot of money with all our 'on'-messages...

Twitter is generating more and more expenses for all of us here, by keeping to tell us to send 'on' over and over again!

what the lack of it? lol – Magdalicious, on May 07, 2008 14:59