10 Things I hate about Twitter and Tweeting

There is nothing like Twitter in Social Media and I am awed by the scope it offers.

Facebook and Orkut are aged now and have now started giving way to Twitter. So the new fashion statement is being on Twitter.

Gone are the days when people asked, “Are you on Facebook”?

The question now is, “Are on on Twitter”?

So if Twitter is so amazing and offers so much of scope and when my entire blog concentrates on Twitter, why a post on “hating Twitter”, you might wonder!!

Like everything else in the world, there are certain things with Twitter, that you might have expected, did not exist. These are things that you hate and hate from the core of the heart. There are some such things with Twitter as well. That is why I hate Twitter.

Having said that, I should not waste time before clarifying the fact that I am an ardent admirer of the 140 characters. The ability that these 140 characters have is much more than what even a blog post has. The only thing that matters is, “how you say it”.

So if I am able to monetize Twitter at the rate of about $1.00 per follower, it is only because I have learnt the art of using Twitter. But in doing that I burnt myself a lot. There were even moments when I cursed the micro blogging platform like anything.

So let me lay down the 10 things that I hate most about Twitter -

1). Twitter TOS – I am sure almost 90% of the people will agree with me. The “terms of service” associated with anything is annoying. So is Twitter. Some of the TOS is confusing and I do not want to get confused.

2). Twitter Ban on Users – Twitter bans users. I do not know why. The explanations from Twitter is again confusing. I had a username – rdilipk1. Twitter banned me immediately after I started tweeting. I remained persistent in the hope that someday they will remove the ban. That day has yet not come.

3). Twitter Support – I will not call that support. A blogging kind of an interface that gives you an option to enter your technical problem in a comment box which doesn’t get answered and is closed without you realizing that it is closed.

4). Twitter’s follower limit – Twitter has some kind of an algorithm that limits the number of people you can follow. Though they have some kind of an explanation to this, I really never understood it. Because there are instances when I have not really reached my follower limit, yet I cannot follow more people.

5). Twitter’s partial behavior – I have noticed quite a few accounts getting partial treatment, be it the follower limit or, automatic tweeting. Why should Twitter be partial?

6). Twitter Backgrounds – You cannot really do anything with the background that Twitter provides except uploading and using a customized background. Twitter can offer some customization on their existing backgrounds for lazy people like me who would not want to go through the hassles of uploading customized backgrounds.

7). Twitter’s ability to DM – Direct Messages are something that gets me the most flexibility to interact with people I follow and the people who follow me. But Twitter does not let me send DMs to more than 1 person. For that I have to look for scripts that I have to install but then I cannot carry them with me to any computer.

8). Twitter’s scope of ‘Lists’ – Twitter has introduced something called as “Lists” so that you can organize your tweets and your followers. But Twitter does not give me an option to categorize the existing followers into the lists. I cannot categorize them on interests that we share and with one click. Instead I have to individually add every follower to a specific list.

9). Twitter limited scope of “Finding People” – The essence of any social media is interaction and networking. Twitter’s “Find people” feature has limited scope and you cannot find people based on common interests or, common tweeting interests and subjects.

10). Twitter on phone – Twitter on phone is an interesting feature and I enjoy it very much. But the charges that the provider charge you per tweet is at time so exhorbitant that I prefer not to use it on phone. Twitter could do something with this.

Twitter might have limitation to quite a few things, given the nature of the internet, but what I feel is that they can at least work on thing like creating a user friendly navigation and sitemap on their help pages etc.

Having said all this, I would once again want to re-iterate that I am in love with Twitter. Nobody can be perfect. So I am okay with a bit imperfect Twitter and I love it.

Photograph courtesy Nara Vieira da Silva Osga