The Twitterless Week Experiment + Potential Substitutes
Background
Following the news and ongoing discussions about Twitter lately has been like watching a car accident repeated over and over again. You try to turn away and ignore the carnage, but the sheer horror of it is too much to avoid.
There have been the multiple outages – now a Twitter standard – a lost database followed by another similar occurrence, with Twitter announcing:
“We just lost a database about 5 minutes ago and this has severely impacted the site.
We’re working on recovering from this now.”
followed by
“We’re experiencing a database problem similar to the one that affected the site last night. Working on the recovery now.”
Meanwhile the coverage has been absolutely brutal – culmonating in Michael Arrington’s announcement (”Twitter Suffers Minor Period Of Uptime“) that:
“Twitter suffered a minor period of uptime last night between database failures. Everything seems back to normal now. Perhaps somebody returned that lost database to them.”
This is no longer irritating. It’s laughable.
Amidst all this – at least in the tech sector – you get the overwhelming feeling that people are starting to give up on the application. This is arguably been symptomised by a dramatic downturn in usage.
For example, the normal flood of updates I traditionally received from those I follow has slowed to a trickle – no doubt in part from the outages, but also arguably from an increasing assumption that Twitter is down more than it’s up.
I’ve grown to really love Twitter, but I’m tired of this.
The Twitterless Week Experiment
With this in mind I’m going to run an experiment I like to call “The Twitterless Week Experiment”.
Starting tonight I will not check or send any Twitter updates until this time next Saturday. The purpose of this is to evaluate the available alternatives and most importantly to assess my motives for using these sorts of technologies in general.
The Options
Jaiku – Jaiku has always been in the back of my mind as a Twitter substitute and I’m fond of the application. The tool convention is fairly similar with IM and SMS support available. This is what I’ll be primarily using, though I will look into two others as well.
Me @ Jaiku: http://mbogle.jaiku.com/
Pownce - I’ve tried Pownce and think it’s ok, but really it seems geared largely towards file transfer. You can certainly post updates in the same sense, I just find Jaiku more appealing. It’s a very solid offering worth checking out.
Me @ Pownce: http://pownce.com/mikebogle/
Plurk - The flavour of the moment is definitely Plurk. There has been a massive flood of interest from the early adopter sect towards this application, and some have begun to rave about it. Having experimented with it for several days now, personally I don’t like it and won’t be using it. The interface is seriously odd and seems to be driven by a decision to do something different for the sake of doing something different.
That said I would recommend taking a look at it. You might like it.
Me @ Plurk: http://www.plurk.com/user/mikebogle
Loss of Networking Opportunities
The important thing to say about leaving Twitter for ANYWHERE else is there will be a massive loss of networking opportunities – at least in the early days. I strongly suspect this is the reason most people have stuck with Twitter as long as they have – it certainly hasn’t been reliability keeping users there.
In my case I’ve spent the better part of 9 months locating contacts I respect and then having done that, developing relationships with them. The prospect of leaving much of this behind is a very sour pill to swallow, but I’ve reached the point where any further time investment in Twitter seems wasted. I’d rather devote the time to meeting new contacts and hope my existing ones follow.
At Week’s End?
The big questionmark in this experiment is what to do when it’s complete. At the end of the week I plan on reflecting on what’s emerged – both good and bad – and hopefully come to a longterm decision at that point. I take the prospect of leaving Twitter very seriously and plan on taking the time to determine whether the choice is the right one for me.
Update [9 June 2008] – Thoughts on Jaiku.
I’ve been using Jaiku quite intensely for two days and have the following thoughts:
- Channels - Jaiku’s Channel tool is very cool. It’s basically a room or group function that let’s you create and join sub-communities within Jaiku to connect and communicate with like-minded people. There seems to be quite a few of them in existence so far. I’ve joined the Linux channel, Ubuntu channel, and Drupal channel, all of which provide some useful connections. Sending Jaiku’s (posts) to a group can be done from the interface or via IM by typing #channel yourmessage (where “channel” is your channel’s name; and “yourmessage” is whatever you want to say)
- No DM! – A HUGE mark against Jaiku is its absence of direct messaging. In twitter you can enter d username message to send a private message to a user. In Jaiku everything is public. If you want to send something private, you have to resort to another method of doing so.Personally I love the DM function in Twitter and use it quite frequently for messages I wouldn’t think of making public. Jaiku seriously needs to add this sort of functionality as well. As far as I’m concerned it’s almost a deal breaker – but I’ll give things to the end of the week for a proper evaluation
- Replies as Threads – I love the way Jaiku has done this. When you receive an update from someone you’re following you can type @username message to reply. Having done this, unlike Twitter, the message is saved as a comment that is easily read beneath the original post. Additionally it is also sent through IM as a regular update, so you have the opportunity to view it in real time as well as refer back to the entire thread later by visiting the original post.
- Still Private Beta – Jaiku is still in limited Beta, which means you need an invite from an existing user before being able to create an account. I assume they’ve done this to limit the traffic going through the servers and therefore prevent any Twitter-esque downtime. On the surface it seems logical – though that said you need to know an existing user to check out the app.As it happens I still have 17 invites left out of the alloted 20. If you’re interested in checking out Jaiku just let me know – either via the comment area below or contacting me. See the About page for details on how to do this.
If you’re on Jaiku be sure to add me – http://mbogle.jaiku.com/
Update 2 [9 June 2008] – Thoughts on Pownce
It’s been quite some time since I last looked at Pownce, and to be frank I hadn’t realised how nice an application it really is. I’m seriously impressed with it in fact – from a design standpoint, usability standpoint and functionality standpoint. This application is really solid.
- Highly granularity in privacy and messaging options – On this front Pownce blows both Jaiku and Twitter away. Not only can you sent private messages, you can also group your contacts into customiseable sub-groups. These are not communities in the Jaiku sense; these are groups that each user organises themselves. If you have edubloggers, family, friends and professional contacts, you can create a different category for each. When your messages are relevant for only certain people, you sent to only that group.
- Nice AIR desktop client – Unlike Twitter, which has a legion of 3rd party desktop clients, Pownce has designed their own, and it is really solid. You can of course do everything from the main site, but this application is a joy to use; and it’s really, really quick. Not only are you notified of updates and links from your contacts, you are shown how many replies each update has received AND given the ability to view the replies – all within the AIR client. They obviously designed it under the expectation and assumption people would use it in lieu of visiting the site – because you can perform a vast amount of actions.
- Links to Images and Video embedded on profile – Unlike both Twitter and Jaiku, which include URL references as just a text link, Pownce formats links to images and video (on certain sites) visually on the profile area as well as including the link. So if you share a link to a Flickr photo or YouTube video it’s not just the URL that’s displayed on screen, but the embedded clip or photo as well. [NB: All links are displayed as text in the AIR client.]
- Threaded Comments – Like Jaiku, Pownce formats comments or replies as threaded discussions and ties them to the original post and also sends the replies through in real time. This is something Twitter does exceptionally poorly – there it’s impossible to gain a full appreciation of the complete discussion that take’s place on a topic. [NB: That said I need to test this more fully once I've added some friends to my profile.]
- 100 MB file transfers for free accounts 250 MB files for pro accounts – This aspect of Pownce blows me away. I don’t understand how they’re able to offer this sort of functionality; but it’s true. Free account holders can share files of up to 100 MB’s (subject to the Terms of Use). Pro account holders can share up to a whopping 250 MB’s with theirs; they can even be made public (free accounts can only share with their contacts)!
While I need to test this functionality further before gaining a proper appreciation of its realities, theoretically you could send video clips of yourself to your family using this tool. Comparatively speaking, Gmail offers a cap of 20 megabytes on email attachments. - Send multiple files as ZIP – Continuing on the last point, Pownce supports sharing of multiple files by ZIP format. So you could theoretically share massive libraries of images using a single ZIP file, or even entire albums (once again subject to the Terms of Use). Bands interested in getting their material out to the public could easily share demo’s this way.
I look forward to continuing my testing Pownce with interest. It has definitely proven to be the big surprise so far.
If you’re on Pownce be sure to add me – http://pownce.com/mikebogle/
References:
- “Twitter Suffers Minor Period Of Uptime“, Michael Arrington, TechCrunch, 6 June 2008
- “Lost a Database“, Twitter Status, 5 June 2008
- “Friday Morning DB Problem“, Twitter Status, 4 June 2008
- Pownce website – http://pownce.com
- Jaiku website – http://jaiku.com
- Plurk website – http://plurk.com
