Global Geek News Blog The home of more Global Geek News insight and opinions

13Mar/094

Why ‘Live Twittering’ is a Horrible Idea

Greetings Readers!

I have another rant again today.  Hopefully I will have some more upbeat things to write about after this but today's topic really irritated me this morning so after gathering my thoughts, I decided that I should address the idea of "live twittering" here.

'Live Twittering' is likely a new term to most people as thankfully it hasn't really caught on at this point.  Live Twittering is much like live blogging except it takes place on Twitter.  It can also take place on other micro-blogging services but since Twitter is the biggest, I will be talking about it today.  Live blogging and live Twittering are similar in that they are a live reporting of something as it happens.  Whether its a tv show or a press event, it is relaying information in near real time primarily for those who cant experience the event themselves or wish to share the experience with others.

Although similar, there is one major difference that I see to be a major problem.  Live blogging is attended by people who specifically seek to be apart of the live blog whereas with live Twittering, followers don't really have a choice without completely unfollowing the person.  Often times, live blogs contain material that people consider to be spoilers but that is something that is acknowledged and accepted by those who intentionally go and read or participate in the live blog.  This presents a major issue for live Twittering.  When live Twittering something such as a TV show (for example, the Battlestar Galactica finale), the live tweeter's followers will be inundated with information they either don't care about or don't want to know because they are unable to watch at that time and don't want to have the episode spoiled for them before they get a chance to watch.  Live twittering essentially takes away that choice for the user and leaves them with the only real option of unfollowing you either permanently or temporarily until they know you have stopped.

Its clear that the major difference is user choice.  The user can choose whether or not to be apart of their live blog, but the choice becomes much more difficult when you force the experience on them by live Twittering.   I have even had people threaten to unfollow me if I took that choice away from them, which is why I only do a live blog.  It all comes down to choice, something that should never be taken away from your potential audience.

New Twitter Etiquette (part 2) Rule:  Thou shalt not live Twitter!

If you want to see how I handle this issue, you are invited to watch and participate in my Battlestar Galactica live blog tonight on Pcnerd37.com.  I will be Twittering out the exact link when I go live (So follow me!).  The show starts at 10pm EST but I typically get things going around 9:30pm EST.

Programming Note:  I put up two Global Geek News Podcasts this week so check them out.  Wesley is busy with SXSW so I will likely do a solo show over the weekend and put it up as soon as its ready.

Follow me on Twitter & Friendfeed!

-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray

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11Sep/080

Yammer won the TechCrunch50?! What were the judges smoking?

Hey readers!

This is my fist on a good number of posts coming out of the TechCrunch50, a truely amazing conference.  Before I start posting my thoughts on many of the other companies that were at the conference, I figured I should start with the winner, Yammer.

For those of you that weren't at the conference, watching it on Ustream or reading the many blog posts from it, Yammer is basically a threaded Twitter clone for the enterprise environment (speaking of which, you can follow me on Twitter!).  The creators apparently decided to steal the threaded conversations idea from Friendfeed, throw it into their Twitter clone and make it enterprise exclusive in the way that Facebook was exclusive in the early days where only people with university email addresses could join.  In this case, its only for people with a company email address.

If you attended or followed the coverage of the conference, you would most likely agree that this was far from the most deserving company.  They didn't even bother to change the Twitter look to something unique.  Like many things that presented there, I would consider this more of a feature than a company.  It would not take much for Twitter to do the same thing, plus they already know the micro-blogging space and have a good bit of experience under their belt.  There were a number of truly revolutionary products unveiled at the event, but this was not one of them.  Adgregate Markets and Swype were just two of the truly industry changing products that were far more deserving of the honor than a Twitter knockoff.  I will of course be writing about those companies and many more in the next few days.

With over a thousand applicants to the conference, this makes me wonder just how bad the applicants were that didn't make the cut.  I don't understand how this could have even been a finalist unless there were some kind of kickbacks to the judges or if the judges were too drunk from the parties to make a logical decision.  I am completely baffled by this decision.  They came up with a business model for Twitter, good for them.  Sell the idea to Twitter, don't try to create a company out of a feature, especially when the same job can be accomplished in a more organized fashion with a simple message board.

Anyway, this is the first of many blog posts on my thoughts about what was presented at the conference.  Over the next couple of days, I will be covering my favorite companies and companies that made me ask myself why how they got got past 1,000 other companies to get into the conference.  I will also be doing a Global Geek News podcast in the next week also with more of my thoughts as well as on many of the other big topics, so stay tuned for that!

-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray

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2Jul/082

Demanding a Higher Standard of Service from Twitter

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

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