It’s now clear to me why Google bought Jaiku instead of Twitter. The reason is simply that Twitter sucks. I’m following a mere 5 users, and I have pruned down the people following me to 2, yet Twitter cannot reliably deliver my messages.
For example, this morning I should have received 3 twits, two of which are weather alerts, and one of which is a message from my girlfriend. In reality, I only received one of the weather alerts, and missed the other two on my phone:
This isn’t just a one-time glitch; I’ve been having trouble receiving twits erratically for the last couple months. If I had to place bets, I’d say that Twitter isn’t scaling properly, or is falling apart from the inside out. After all, if Google bought your biggest-but-still-tiny competitor instead of you, wouldn’t you just give up? Maybe at Twitter there’s no one left at the helm.
Another annoyance is that no matter how hard I try, I keep getting twits from a random person:
I’m not subscribed to their alerts, and additionally I’ve marked them as “blocked” but yet I continue to receive their updates on my phone. I’ve tried everything short of sueing Twitter in civil court to get them to stop, but the alerts continue to flow. If you wonder if I’m alone, I’m not. Someone’s gone to the effort to register http://twittersucks.com, and a quick search for twitter sucks will get you a lot more.
Update: I was going to say that things might be getting better, because yesterday I received both weather updates, but today I only got one.
