Greetings Readers!

At the risk of being flamed, I decided its time to do another Twitter post.  No, this is not another part of my Twitter Etiquette posts.  This post is about why we put up with the horrible service on Twitter and how we need to demand a higher level of service from the popular micro-blogging service.

I have been using Twitter for many months now and there is one constant that I have noticed with the service, instability.  I would say that probably 50% of the time that I try to reach Twitter, I get the dreaded whale or no page at all!  This is very frustrating when I need a way to share important information or get information that others are trying to share with me.  If that wasn’t bad enough, many times I cant see my replies or old tweets because pagination has been disabled.  What is really surprising is that with all of the “fixes” and “improvements” that they make, there seems to be less reliable functionality now than there has ever been.  What is really sad is that people continue to rely on the service and use it like its the best thing to hit the internet since YouTube.  Whether its using Twitter to promote a blog, podcast or to get sprung from jail in Egypt, people continue to rely on the service like its a necessary part of life.

While I will admit I like Twitter and the concept behind it when it works, I think becoming reliant on such an unstable service can be disasterous.  Whether you are stuck in an Egyptian jail or using Twitter as a way to communicate with your customers, it should not be relied upon as a primary means of communication.  Relying upon an unstable service can cost you a huge amount of time, money and frustration for both you and others.  What if other communication services such as telephones, email, or instant messenger had the track record that Twitter has?  Would we be where we are today if the phones only worked 50% of the time?  If Twitter is going to be the next big thing that it is heralded to be, the users must hold it to a higher standard of service than it currently has.

We wouldn’t tolerate downtime like this from other products and services, why should we put up with it from Twitter?  We couldn’t function if our operating systems were this unstable (no blue screen of death jokes please) or our web browser or our email.  Before Twitter and services like it can ever mature and be built upon as the next great platform, users must hold it to a greater standard of service.  Stability and reliability are the keys to any communication mediums.  If these cannot be achieved, the service must die so it can be replaced by one that can achieve those qualities.

If Twitter cant gets its act together, it should be abandoned.

-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray