Gone are the gut-wrenching, mind-bending panic attacks.  I am so thoroughly geek that I have previously mourned the outages.  Lately my attitude has undergone serious degradation, sinking from the once experienced OMGWTF to a more apathetic status of Meh.

Although I am rather cavalier about the outages, I still use these times of Twitter-exia to come up with new ways to poke fun at Twitter and those of us who use it.  What fun is a ridiculously obsessive self-absorbed addiction if you can’t humiliate yourself and others like you when given ample opportunity to do so?

Can I get an Amen?

During one recent outage I looked over at my amazingly geeky other half and said, “I have the perfect alternative to that idiotic Fail Whale.”   I proceeded to explain what I believe to be a new and greatly improved Twitter Failure Mascot – one with less sweet and more meat – less happy and more snappy – a snark among snarks wrapped in the familiar net of doom and gloom.

Yes, my friends, the goofy and somehow happy-to-be-a-failure Fail Whale has been replaced by his snarkier cousin, Fail Seaman.  I believe that there is an animated version in the future, complete with Twitter related snarky commentary.

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Between day jobs, the business, the kids and everything in between, we’re like a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest – making it happen, but not sure how.  But don’t worry your geeky little heads. Our lives are overflowing with geeky goodness even if we aren’t posting about it.

I feel a tremendous amount of guilt…okay, a smidge…for not writing more frequently.  We are in the middle of moving to a slightly different business model, rebranding some things and rearranging our priorities. That takes a lot out of any geek because it requires a tremendous amount of organization, planning and foresight.  Being the poster child for adult ADD doesn’t help either.  Shiny ball….

In an effort to keep you entertained for at least the next 90 seconds, I am including the video below. It speaks so clearly to my experiences lately regarding shortcuts, a rush to complete tasks without proper planning, execution without trying to break the concept, etc.   And it’s funny as hayull.  Enjoy!

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Twitter is an immeasurably valuable tool for networking that has become an incredible lifeline for me and for our business.  Or it was.

Today, Biz Stone in a Twitter Blog post, informed the Twitterverse of a “small settings change“.

We’ve updated the Notices section of Settings to better reflect how folks are using Twitter regarding replies. Based on usage patterns and feedback, we’ve learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow-it’s a good way to stay in the loop. However, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don’t follow in your timeline is undesirable. Today’s update removes this undesirable and confusing option.

Confused? That’s understandable and exactly why we made the update.

Let me try to be succinct and direct: WTF?

 
I can understand why some folks might be confused with the settings and do not want comments from folks they don’t follow to appear in their streams.  Make a change to the default setting to assist those folks.  Don’t handicap those who actually use Twitter to network and create organic, thriving communities of commonality like DCTH or UI/UX.

If this dys-functionality had been forced on me sooner, there are a lot of AWESOME people I never would have met.  Yes, that’s met as in face to face, in real life, outside the virutal world of Twitter.  I never would have experienced Jared Spool’s wicked humor or learned that Aussie’s called beer coozies stubby holders or that @cavallucci_hat is snarky.  I never would have gone on a photowalk in Olde Towne Portsmouth or spent a perfectly good Saturday geeking out with a bunch of brilliant UI/UX  minds, trying to drink in every bit of knowledge they could share.  There are friends I would not have if Biz and Ev decided to tell me sooner that the way I network is undesirable and confusing.

This is a huge failure and one that I hope is reversed.  This lastest change actually rips the soul from Twitter and leaves it on the floor to die.

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No matter how many times I have heard that type of comment, it STILL makes me cringe and want to pummel something (or someone).  In the end, I console myself with the likelihood that the attempt to create their own website will be a giant FAIL!

In the category of “FAIL” and “My job is harder than you know” as well as “I hope we don’t end up on your site”, comes YourLogoMakesMeBarf courtesy of a tweet from @creattica earlier today.  YLMMB is a humorous look at what happens when the untrained and unskilled attempt something that requires just a wee bit more skill and talent than most folks have.

The Ten Commandments of Barfy Logos made me cry from laughing – the perfect combination of DOH! and sarcasm and OMG WTH were they thinking.

So grab your barf bag before you head on over to YLMMB and never ever forget Commandment #9:  Thou shalt not take thy ’swoosh’ in vein.

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MALFUNCTION MALFUNCTION!!!

What in the world has happened to Twitter?

Earlier in the week I noticed the addition of this little rotating ad type box underneath my stats.    It was mildly annoying, but not so obtrusive or disconcerting as to cause alarm.  I pretty much ignore that little blip on my screen, so what do I care really if the Twitter powers that be decide to use that to tell new and not-so-new users about features of Twitter like “Search” or “Widgets”.  But tonight, I am simply outdone.

Someone with absolutely no idea of usability and UX/UI concepts has gone and ruined it.  They have done away with the “Older” and “Newer” buttons at the bottom of the window and put in a horrid “MORE” button.

MORE what?  And once I get MORE, how do I get LESS?  I realize I can use the back browser button, but that doesn’t really work right.  I just get this really ugly screen to keep scrolling down down down into the bottomless hell of Tweets.

Really, Twitter, REALLY?  This is your idea of an improvement??  How far below the scroll do you think most people go??

I am not one of those folks who is hooked on “the norm” and doesn’t embrace change.  I am all about change that makes things better, more usable, improves the UX.  But this is far from any of those things.

Dear Twitter Gods – please review your UX and study what is truly a better experience before you gigantically hose a really awesome product and service.

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