The flaw with Twitter

[almostwitty]

Twitter has often been described as a way of having a pub conversation with your friends, or of telling people what you’re up to. After its’ BBC One mainstream debut on the Jonathan Ross chatshow courtesy of Stephen Fry, I’m sure there will be many many more UK people joining the Twitter party. But there’s one huge flaw.

I happen to follow games/geek expert Aleks Krotoski’s Twitter account. And she Twittered something interesting about geek pie. However, because she doesn’t follow me (and why should she, to be fair?) I have no way of messaging her via Twitter to ask her what on earth geek pie is.

I could send a Twitter back saying “@aleksk What is geek pie?” - but given that she doesn’t follow me, the chances of her seeing that are nil. And I can’t email or direct message her direct.

So Twitter is a one-way broadcasting system unless you choose to open up your own channels. And we all know how one-way broadcasting systems tend to end up…

Update: I now know what a geek pie is.

Originally published at almost witty. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[ladycinnahster.livejournal.com]

So Twitter is a one-way broadcasting system unless you choose to open up your own channels.

It is that main reason that I ended up leaving Twitter for. I got really tired of responding to someone I was following who wasn't following me. It was a huge waste of time and cleverness figuring out how to condense a paragraph into 140 characters.

[almostwitty]

Actually, I have since discovered TweetDeck - and discovered literally tens of replies that people sent to me based on my own semi-witty Twitter updates that I'd never spotted before.

[ladycinnahster.livejournal.com]

I still find it highly unpersonable, and much prefer the "old" ways of connecting like yahoo messenger, or a journal such as LJ. At least they are trying to improve it!

[almostwitty]

The trouble with Yahoo/LJ is that it doesn't do bite-sized content. You're essentially forming a commitment to read somebody at that point.

At least Twitter lets you get tiny pieces of their thoughts, and then you can decide if it's worth following someone or not. and whether they can follow you. But yeah, they ought to leave *some* way of replying to someone on Twitter...