Twitter In Schools, And The Inherent Failings Of Twitter
December 12, 2008 – 3:37 pm | by Daryl TayI’ve been slowly getting back into Twitter, and while searching Twitter for “Queen’s University”, I was surprised to find Queen’s Campus Security on Twitter.
Checking them out, the updates are actually pretty relevant and useful, warnings about fires, theft and other such concerns:
Queen
However, their last update was on the 22nd of November, which is roughly around the time SMS updates got shut off for Canada as well. (The rest of the world got it shut off back in August)
Earlier in the year, in Digital Media class, Andre’s group discussed how Twitter could be used as a real-time crisis tool in campuses and/or work places, exactly in situations like a fire where you can send out one tweet and it hits all students via their cell phones. I suppose now that’s only restricted to the US.
This is not meant to be yet another Twitter-bashing post, but instead I just want to highlight how clear it is to me that Twitter never thought about the implications of including all these bells and whistles early on, and since the Twitter Fail events earlier this year, it looks like things are only getting worse, not better.
At the crux of it, things would have been better if Twitter had never introduced SMS worldwide, but slowly rolled it out if and when they were sure it was financially feasible. Once people are used to a service and you take it away, they feel shortchanged.
Personally, I’m not sure what to feel about Twitter these days. On one hand I’m beginning to feel I’ve missed it after being away for a few months, and I’m beginning to re-discover a sense of community on it.
On the other, Twitter is still by no means stable and news like this that suggests a lack of business sensibility behind them (and recent purchase and shut down of I Want Sandy) just makes me feel unsure in investing time and attention on Twitter.
I want to know if you’re still using Twitter and in what way? If you’re out of the US, has the lack of SMS-capabilities annoyed you, or is it something you can live with?
Tags: digital media, i want sandy, queen's campus security, queen's university, twitter, twitter sms canada, twitter sms singapore, twitter sms US
2 Responses to “Twitter In Schools, And The Inherent Failings Of Twitter”
By Hedirman on Dec 12, 2008 | Reply
These days I find my Twitter feed a lot more interesting and manageable to follow – I’ve been prudent about who I follow. And some of the links and contacts have even resulted in published stories. I was just mentioning to Brian how it’s an interesting mix of links and conversation.
But I think something needs to be done about linking @replies to the original tweets – maybe they could tweak it, just like how Facebook ties indented comments to a status update. Naturally, a simple UI change like that could actually help generate more replies and engage users to develop more of a conversation and consequently, a community.
By Daryl Tay on Dec 14, 2008 | Reply
@Hedirman: Yeah I am totally with you on that. That’s why I’m a huge fan of Plurk because it allows for those threaded conversations that Twitter does not have (yet?)