Profit Baron

Just over a month ago, there was a trend of unfollowing on Twitter which although occurs regularly was different to the norm. This type of unfollowing was where a user unfollows everyone that they follow and then only follow a few users.

Since then it has received considerable attention and I have read numerous arguments for jumping on the unfollowing trend and against jumping on the unfollowing trend.

I’m not going into too much detail regarding as to why I decided to unfollow everyone as the advantages and disadvantages are well documented, although I will discuss the two main factors of my decision.

I recently blogged about how I was starting to like Twitter by actually realising what the service means to me and this helped to make the decision to unfollow the 4,145 users that I was following. A decision which has significantly improved my experience.

This is because, you can’t realistically follow 4,145 people unless you want to use a significant amount of your time to read all those tweets of the users that you were following.

Furthermore, if you follow only a limited amount of users the level of spam decreases to zero unless you want to follow spammers especially in terms of DM’s which whilst I still have a DM bug, I am yet to receive a spam direct message  since adopting this new policy.

The disadvantage of adopting this policy is that you’re going to lose followers. My follower count has fallen by 506 already to 3884 followers. The drop of 506 may not seem significant but considering the amount of followers I had 4390 when I decided to do the mass unfollowing then I have already lost over 10% of my followers and I’m expecting to lose more. The fact that I have lost over 10% of my follwers doesn’t concern me because, if people are only following me because, I am following them – I don’t want them to follow me.  I only want people to follow me who want to see what I have to say and not because I am prepared to follow them back.

According to Tweetwaster I’ve wasted 3.25 days on Twitter (280,920 seconds or 4,682 minutes or 78.03 hours) and if you asked me during that period if I felt that I’d wasted my time on Twitter I’d have probably said yes but that’s all changed…

In case, you’re wondering how I got to so many tweets on a service that I didn’t see the value of then, blame FriendFeed as for a small period of time I imported my likes and my comments too.

You may highlight I’ve gone on record saying that Twitter has problems and you’re right I have but I’m not going to sit here and pretend they don’t because, those problems are still there – my DM bug is still there and they’ve increased the usage of URL shorteners but nothings perfect, right?!

However, I like the fact they are a highly ambitious and open company more then they’d like to be as, we’ve all seen their admin area and know that they want to become the pulse of the planet but, they aren’t the main reasons as to why I’ve started to like it.

This is because, after 9,364 tweets I’ve found a reason to use it by realising,  I was looking at Twitter wrong and I believe that this is probably the same reason that 60% of Twitter Users Quit Within the First Month.

Let me explain.

I assumed Twitter should be like FriendFeed by having threaded conversations, likes (which could easily be implemented by fixing favourites) and a bunch of other cool features which are already existent on FriendFeed such as, expand shortened URLs  which it does on Twitter Search, a RT button, display images and play videos inside Twitter etc. Whilst some of these features are coming soon like the RT button I realised Twitter doesn’t need to be packed full of features well ok, maybe it does need some of them because, after all it is there to ask you one question what are you doing? and if you start to use Twitter for only that purpose you’ll find value in it.

Sure you can use it for other purposes such as  finding news, getting feedback,  notifying customers, find potential customers/people to network with, acquire votes on places like Digg etc but these are kind of involved in the whole process of what are you doing? anyway.

Why? Because Twitter isn’t a multifunctional tool like the ones that we’ve become accustomed to. For example, Facebook provides messaging, applications, games, videos etc rather Twitter is a tool which only does one job and it’s good at it too and I’m certain if you start to think of Twitter like that then you’ll start to like it too.

Twitter…I’m not impressed with you!

It’s not because the enterprise version of you has launched a bunch of new features which would be really great on your service nor is it that you’ve increased the usage of url shorteners…its not even that you’ve gone mainstream meaning internet marketers are filling spamming my @replies

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… Although credit where credit is due, those accounts are no longer showing in my @replies.

I’m mainly not impressed with Twitter because, they don’t seem to care about the most important people…their users. For instance when Twitter allowed support tickets into their customer service area…yes, that same customer service area which co-founder Biz Stone said “does an amazing job” on the Twitter blog I was hoping for a quick resolution. I never got a reply.

Furthermore I have a DM bug on my account which has gone worse over a period of time. When I initially contacted @ev @jack and @biz via Twitter itself to inform them of the DM bug…the problem never got resolved in fact it has worsened from a 1 DM bug when I contacted them to a 5 DM bug.

Proof of my inbox/sentbox being empty (I read/reply/delete as I go):

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Moreover, I am not the only one who isn’t impressed with Twitter’s customer service or lack of as problems have been reported by many bloggers and your users including Allen Stern and Orli Yakeul. It’s not even like Twitter lack a customer service department as you haven’t only mentioned that you have employees dedicated to it, companies such as Zappos and Dell have praised you for your customer support… which leads to the conclusion that Twitter only cares about their “celebrity” users (the ones who they’re going to make money off in the short-term rather then in the long-term).

Whilst Twitter isn’t the only company who aren’t providing a great customer service experience to all users it is vital everyone realises that people are likely to tell as many people as possible about a bad customer service experience than a good customer service experience, and eventually if you fail to provide a good customer service experience for lots of users it will impact negatively upon your business.

Personally I hate URL shorteners and it is not because they’re are so many of them…

2 Short.Url (2su.de), 2Zeus, 3.ly, 9mp, a.gd, abbr, arm.in, a.nf, bit.ly, bloat.me, Buk.me, BurnURL, Chilp.it, cli.gs, clk.my, Clop.in, DiggBar, ff.im, Fly2.ws, fon.gs, Foxy URL, FWD4.me, g4.ms, gl.am, Good.ly, Gurl.es, hex.io, Hurl.no, idek.net, irt.me, is.gd, J2j.de, kissa.be!, Kisa.Ch, kl.am, krz.ch, Kore.us, Kots.Nu, ktzros, Lincr, LinksPreadeR (l.pr), LinxFix, LNK.by, lt.tl, lurl.no, Metamark (xrl.us), migre.me, micURL, min2me, MinURL, Moourl, MyURL.in, nd url, Pendek.in, Pic.gd, PiURL, Plurl, pnt.me, POPrl, pt2.me, Puke.It, qr.cx, Qurl, qux.in, r.im, RDE.me, redir.ec, RIMS, rnk.me, RubyURL, Safe.mn, Sai.ly, SFU.ca, shorl, Short.ie, short.to, shortn.me, Shrtn, Shw.me, Smallr.net, SMFU, Snipie, SnipURL (sn.im), snkr.me, song.ly, srnk.net, StumbleUpon (su.pr), TightURL, TimesURL, tini.us, Tiny.cc, TinyURL, to.ly, to.vg, tr.im, tra.kz, tsort.us, tweet.me, Tweetburner (twurl.nl), Twip.us, Twirl.at, twtr.us (tw6.us), u.nu, UiopMe, ur.ly, URL.AG, URL.ie, URL (un)faker, urlBorg, urlShort (ooqx.com), urlShort (u.mavrev.com), urlzen, Virl, vl.am, VTC, XORTR (xrt.me), XR.com, xrl.in, X.vu, xxsurl.deZ.PE, Zi.pe, ZipMyURL, ZZ.GD

…and those are only the one’s which I have recently interacted with.

I hate the fact that I am forced to use them – with the main ones that I am forced to use being ff.im and bit.ly although ff.im links are only generated when sending FriendFeed data to Twitter so that doesn’t really bother me.

For example, if I go to Twitter and post a link it is automatically converted to a bit.ly link don’t get me wrong bit.ly is a really cool service especially the  “+” feature and the same happens when I click on a link from Twitter it is generally a bit.ly link (unless someone created it manually or used a service such as awe.sm like Techcrunch do) which means that we are basically adding an extra layer to the system.

However this isn’t the major problem with URL Shorteners.

Let me explain.

The Internet was designed in a way which meant that there wasn’t a single point of failure which could easily break large parts of the web. URL shorteners can cause this single point of failure because, a regular hyperlink implicates a browser, its DNS resolver and the publisher’s DNS server and website whilst a URL shortener adds an additional layer which acts like a third DNS resolver and if a problem occurs with the URL shortener then you can’t access the ‘real’ hyperlink which causes a single point of failure.

Additionally this extra layer means that it’s going to take time to get you to the link due to additional DNS lookups and server hits.

Expanding on this single point of failure theme, URL shorteners become middlemen sitting between the link and its original destination. This is one of my biggest concerns which I have previously expressed and which has been highlighted recently by the media with the fact that Tr.im decided it was going to close down although it has since decided to go “open-source” and remain open as the third-party could decide that a link which you shorten violates its Terms Of Service and delete it. Moreover, the URL shortener which is now the key to getting to the original link could experience downtime,  accidentally erase the database, forget to renew its domain, get hacked, disappear or change the way its url shortener works which means instead of sending you directly to the original link it sends you to a page on their site which contains the original link on.

Consequently, there is the usability aspect of using a URL Shortener which is highlighted on Twitter.com itself as you can’t tell where the link will take you (although you can tell on Twitter Search). However, FriendFeed does expand the url which helps to prevent phishing but many sites are like Twitter and do not expand the shortened URL.