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

So what is this story about Bharti Airtel and Twitter?

Twitter had an option of adding a mobile phone device. You could add your mobile phone number and choose to receive Tweets directly to your mobile phones. You could also send out tweets from your mobiles. This option was available for the Indian market as well but the charges that the service providers charged were extremely exorbitant. This is when Twitter decided to discontinue this service for India.

It was then that Twitter exploded. Since the beginning of this year, Twitter has accumulated almost 12 millions users and when almost 35% of it comes from a country like that of India, it was obvious for Twitter to think of introducing better services for this market.

That is when Bharti Airtel, the leading mobile phone service provider decided they would partner with Twitter to get a useful and cheaper service for the Twitterers in India.

This is an excerpt from the Twitter Blog -

Bharti Airtel is offering people in every city, every village, every remote taluk and even the smallest panchayat the opportunity to connect to Twitter and enjoy the open exchange of information with no added fees. We are proud to have Bharti Airtel as our partner. Give Twitter a try with your Airtel phone by sending START to 53000. And spread the word!
Twitter is not about technology, it’s about people. We worked quickly to establish full SMS service in India with the largest operator because organic growth in the region has been unusually strong and there is huge potential for positive impact.

So if your thoughts are around the question – Why only Airtel, then this should answer it. At Official Twitter Blog, Biz Stone, Twitter Co-founder said -

We worked quickly to establish full SMS Service in India with the largest operator because organic growth in the region has been unusually strong and there is huge potential for positive impact.”

That is indeed and interesting association. Since I am with Airtel, I immediately subscribed to the service and am excited at the options available.

This service is exclusive to Airtel for the first 4 weeks after which the other mobile phone service providers can also start such a service.

How to subscribe to this service?

Airtel subscribers can try out the Twitter notifications by sending this shortcode SIGNUP to number 53000. Existing Twitter users who wish to link their Airtel Number to Twitter account need to send START to 53000 for activating their device.  More details about Twitter on Airtel can be accessed at this exclusive page – http://airtel.in/twitter/.

New users:
Send SIGNUP to 53000

Existing Twitter Users to link their Device to their account:
Send START to 53000.

The Twitter advocates from India includes people like film stars Priyanka Chopra @priyankachopra, Gul Panag @gulpanag, and Mallika Sherawat @mallikala, director Karan Johar @kjohar25, Minister of State Shashi Tharoor @shashitharoor, upper house member Pritish Nandy @pritishnandy, news anchors Barkha Dutt @bdutt and Vir Sanghvi @virsanghvi, plus media outlets MTV India @MTVindia and NDTV @ndtv just to name a few.

So if you are on Airtel, then start using Twitter on your mobile phone and enjoy the service.

There is a bug in Twitter!!!

Yes, that’s right. You can read more about this here.

A few days, I casually searched for myself using my username on Twitter’s people search. I was taken aback to find that my name did not appear in there. Then I searched using my full name and still there were no results. For a minute, I felt as if I was blacklisted. Then I wondered as to why should Twitter blacklist me. I had always ensured that I followed their rules and policies.

I kept searching for any bugs that were there on Twitter in their help pages for a long, long time but couldn’t find one. Finally I convinced myself that my account might have been removed from their search results for some odd reason that I couldn’t figure out but which they were pretty sure was right.

It was today that I once again searched their help pages, just to check if there was any updates and I came across the above help article which talked about this issue as a bug in their system.

I am so relieved now.

The above said article is for people who are not appearing when you search with your username and your complete name on Twitter people search.

In case you are appearing in Twitter search results when you search with your username, you should refer to this article.

What should I do if I am experiencing this bug?

Immediately go to the first article that I have mentioned at the beginning of the post and log your comment there and don’t forget to mention your username and the time since when you are experiencing this problem. The engineers at Twitter are working on this issue and should be able to rectify it soon.

If you are on Twitter, it is also important to ensure that you follow their guidelines. You can find their terms of service here and the Twitter rules here.

Any inappropriate use of Twitter could result in your tweets falling off the timelines or, your details being pulled off the search results. You account might even get blacklisted.