So being generally interested in the whole social networking thing lately, I decided to try out Twitter a couple weeks ago. Twitter does 24/7 what Facebook status updates were meant to: allow you to keep your friends updated on the minutia of your life. Facebook status updates have degenerated to being a sort of contest of cleverness (perhaps to make interesting the boring crap of your life). There are a few classes of Facebook status updates (FBSU) I have categorized:
- Life status — indicating tiredness, boredom, anxiety, desires, location, etc.
- Temporary fandom — showing in some way that you’re a fan of a group, tv show, movie, politician, sports team, product, etc.
- Pissed-offedness — invective-splattered status updates, often employing various symbols (%!$#@)
- Pseudo-philosophical gibberish — for those who want their friends to think them deep
Twitter does all of that but by its nature also allows the minutia reports to be more natural. On Facebook, no one uses status updates to tell people they are at home or at school or at work. I tried, believe me. No one cared, oddly enough. So I stopped and have resorted mostly to #1, #2 and #4 on the list above.
So anyhow, for the past two weeks, I have tried to use my gmail contacts to find friends on Twitter, which are probably few. Over twenty failures. And now today, Twitter is down and has been down for a while. Supposedly it is being upgraded, and I’m hoping that will mean the problem is fixed. I emailed them yesterday about it after many, many failed importing attempts. Currently, I’m enjoying the thought that Twitter’s downtime is their way of saying, “this update’s for you.”
Update
As of 5pm EDT, Twitter is back up. But, I still can’t import my gmail contacts to find friends.
Posted by Twitter continues to suck « The Mendicant Bug on 22 September 2007 at 08:43:20
[...] 22nd, 2007 in bugs, complaints, gmail, social networking, twitter So Twitter still has not fixed the problem with importing gmail contacts. They responded to my email once, asking which browser I was using [...]
Posted by Tweets for Twits « The Mendicant Bug on 18 December 2007 at 02:17:09
[...] December 2007 in facebook, information diaspora, social networking, twitter, web 2.0 Well, after many frustrating months of waiting for Twitter to finally fix their gmail contacts import feature, I [...]