Twitter Alternatives?
Written by jlgaddis on November 27, 2008 – 12:23 am -
I’m real tempted to ditch Twitter.
I interact with Twitter in three ways:
.Most of my interaction with Twitter is through SMS. Nearly all of the updates that I receive from Twitter are via SMS. I “follow” a number of people (74, as I write this) but receive updates via SMS for perhaps only a third of those. I started out having everyone’s updates sent to me via SMS, but some people either 1) post way too frequently and end up annoying the shit out of me or 2) just don’t say enough interesting things (e.g., the “signal-to-noise” ratio is way outta control).
Most (but not all) of my updates are done through ping.fm. My BlackBerry has an AIM client and that’s how I communicate with ping.fm. I send updates to “pingfm” on AIM and those are broadcasted out to Facebook, Pownce (which I hardly ever use), and Twitter. This is nice because I can update Twitter and Facebook at the same time. Because I don’t want every update going to Facebook (e.g. “@ replies”), I usually send those back to Twitter as an SMS.
Last, if I’m at home and on the computer I usually keep Twitter open in a tab and occasionally refresh it, just to keep up on everyone that I don’t receive SMS updates for.
When I first signed up for Twitter, my primary method of interacting with it was via IM. The “track” feature was awesome and allowed me to find others who had similar interests as mine. Once the shit hit the fan with regard to IM (in other words, when it became massively unreliable), they pulled support for it. Suckage.
Then, several months ago, the Twitter service as a whole became extremely unreliable for a good period. A number of folks jumped ship then. I almost did, but I stuck around.
Today, I read on the Twitter blog that they pulled support for receiving SMS updates in Canada (due to rising costs). Since Twitter has no apparent business model (and, it seems, isn’t generating any revenue), it makes sense to assume that eventually the cash supply will be running low. At some point, they’ll pull support for SMS updates in the U.S. as well, at which time I’ll really have no use for the service anymore.
Maybe I should just get out now.
Are there any viable alternatives? It’d be nice to be able to send and receive updates via SMS. I’d be content with receiving updates via SMS and sending updates through another method (e.g. ping.fm, web only, etc.). What are my choices?
Tags: facebook, internet, the web | 2 Comments »
November 27th, 2008 at 1:21 am
I’m in the same boat as you. I don’t think there are any real alternatives, in terms of SMS support. I use Twitter and Identi.ca, updating both through ping.fm, but Identi.ca has even worse SMS support (it’s some email crap, so you get a message that says “you have a new email, reply with r to read” or something insane like that). Identi.ca doesn’t have the power to negotiate the kind of deal Twitter had. If Twitter can’t negotiate a good deal with Canadian carriers, I’m not sure who can…
sigh
November 27th, 2008 at 2:15 am
Hey Blaise,
The lack of real alternatives (especially when it comes to SMS support) is why I’ve stuck around this long. I’d be happy if they’d just bring back IM support — I’d guess nearly everyone who uses the service with SMS has at least one mobile IM client on their phone.
Unfortunately, I don’t see IM support coming back anytime soon. I understand Twitter just turned down an offer from Facebook, who likely would have kept SMS support as well as bringing back IM support.
Oh well…