Lately I've come across so much Twitter chatter (say THAT 3 times fast!) I've decided to devote this entire week (or "Tweek") to this topic. Today's post offers some general thoughts on the service and the rest of the week I'll focus on how-tos, from the basics of getting started to tips and tricks for improving your experience with it. If you have any specific questions you'd like answered, please send them to me, and I'll do my best to respond to them.

Check out the blog of just about any hard-core Twitter evangelist and you'll probably find some variation of this statement: "I didn't 'get' Twitter at all at first, but now I LOVE it!" Even Darren Rowse, who at the time of this writing has more than 30,000 followers (@problogger) and who is the founder of TwiTip, one of the most popular blogs devoted specifically to using Twitter effectively, says this on his About page:

"When I first heard of Twitter and saw everyone jumping on the bandwagon I registered the @problogger account but was very skeptical of the medium. I couldn’t see it ever making much sense for me to participate. Oh how wrong I was!"

I don't think there's any question that Twitter has shown itself to be an incredibly valuable service, especially when it comes to letting people find out what's going on during major news events as they're happening: California wildfires, Mumbai terrorist attacks, plane landing in the Hudson River. This seems to me like the most effective use of Twitter, the one that makes the most sense to me in terms of matching form to function. In those situations, you want to get the word out quickly about something that people are desperate for information about, and you don't need (or have the time) to write lengthy narratives.

Lately, however, I've been seeing more discussions about how Twitter has become "the" technology-du-jour, with tips flying fast and furiously about how best to take advantage of it for both personal and business use. A very small sampling:

• Why Twitter Will Go Mainstream in 2009 (TwiTip)
• Connect To Customers with Twitter (PC World)
• Twitter's new status: Investing tool (MSN Money)
• Twitter's Tweaking Marketing (Austin Business Journal)
• Why Recruiters Should Use Twitter and Must-Know Tips for Finding New Talent and Business (RecruitingBlogs.com)

So has Twitter reached a tipping point where it's going to become as essential in our lives as e-mail or search engines? Is it inevitable that everybody and his brother (or is that "Twother"?) will merrily join the tweeting revolution? And if you don't jump on the bandwagon, are you going to be left behind forever?

I'm not so sure. I think there still remain several obstacles to having the general population—those who don't classify themselves as "social media experts"—take to Twitter en masse. Here are the top five reasons I still have my doubts.

The Usability Factor

If Twitter had only been around for, say, six months, I wouldn't see this as such an issue. But it's actually been in existence for more than two years. So it's inexplicable to me that there are so many limitations and design flaws (functional, not aesthetic) with the interface. For example:

• Search. Most websites today have a search box at the top of every page or at least somewhere fairly obvious in a sidebar. Twitter has a text link in the bottom navigation bar, the same place you find links to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. (And you can guess how often those get read.) At least it's better than it was when I signed up only a couple of months ago and they didn't yet have the Find People link at the top of the page. Yes, it's there now, but did it really take two years to figure out that users might want to look up friends who might be using Twitter as well?
• @Replies. When you post a tweet, people who read it can click an icon that lets them reply to that specific post. (It automatically begins with "@[YOUR USER NAME], which is why they're called "@Replies.") If you don't happen to be online when someone replies to you—no worries. They're all listed on your @Replies page, which you can get to by clicking the link in the right-hand nav. Except there's no way of knowing that there are new replies sitting there. There's no indication in the nav bar and no way to have them e-mailed to you (unlike Direct Messages, which does offer you that option.) I can't tell you how many people have told me they've gone to their @Replies page only to discover that they've got messages there that were sent weeks before.
• Yet more @Replies. Following everyone's replies to everyone else's tweets can be a bit overwhelming—especially when you're new to the service. So on your Settings page, Twitter offers you three options to help you determine the level of "noise" you want in your timeline. You can choose to see the @Replies that the people you're following have sent to other people you're following; the @Replies of the people you're following to everybody they're replying to, regardless of whether you're following them or not; or no @Replies at all. What you CAN'T do, however, is only see the @Replies directed to you. I would venture to go out on a limb to say these are the ones most people would be most interested in. Of course, if someone does reply to one of your tweets, they will show up on your @Replies page. (See previous bullet point as to why this is not a big help.)

There are more, but the larger point is that these are all things that should be common sense and that I can't imagine would be particularly difficult to implement. So the question is, why haven't they? Unless the company decides to make ease-of-use a bigger priority than it has to date, I don't see Twitter becoming a "must-have" tool for most people any time soon.

The Security Factor

On Monday, January 5th, the following notice was posted on the Twitter blog:

"This morning we discovered 33 Twitter accounts had been 'hacked' including prominent Twitter-ers like Rick Sanchez and Barack Obama... We immediately locked down the accounts and investigated the issue. Rick, Barack, and others are now back in control of their accounts... The issue with these 33 accounts is different from the Phishing scam aimed at Twitter users this weekend.

So over the course of three days, Twitter was hit with two major security breaches. Of course it's great that they responded to and resolved these issues quickly. But that doesn't take away the fact that clearly Twitter has become vulnerable to hackers and scammers. And it will only become more so as it becomes more popular and, therefore, a more attractive target.

If you're trying to expand your base beyond the early adopters—even if that base number is already in the millions—the people you're targeting have to be confident that their personal data is safe. Right now, I wouldn't say that is the case.

The AQ Factor

AQ = Annoying Quotient. With almost four and a half million people now using Twitter (source: Mashable), it's inevitable that a certain number of those people are going to use Twitter in a way that drives you absolutely crazy: posting the minutiae of their daily lives, breaking a 3-paragraph thought over 12 140-character tweets, carrying on lengthy @Reply conversations that would be better suited to direct messaging, etc. Eventually you're going to be faced with the decision of whether or not to resort to the dreaded Unfollow.

That then leads to another AQ factor, as in the Awkward Quotient. When you interact with these people in other ways—whether online or in person—how will they feel when they find out they've been tweet-dumped? So now you're left in the position of having to choose between feeling annoyed and feeling guilty—not exactly a motivator to add more people to your network (or to even keep coming back).

The Lack of Customer Support Factor

On December 10th, I submitted a request through Twitter's Customer Support form, asking them to fix something related to my account that I'm fairly certain would have been an easy fix. I know they got the request, because I received an automated reply that contained a URL where I could check on its status.

A couple of weeks later, having heard nothing at all, I went back to that page and posted a follow-up. As of today, I have still never received a reply and the e-mail link now takes me to a page that doesn't exist.

Now, you can argue that a service provided for free doesn't owe its users any support. Fair enough. But then don't tell me you're offering it and then simply ignore me. And, fair or not, leaving users hanging is not a way to build a critical mass.

The One Trick Pony Factor

To me, this is the biggest obstacle to Twitter extending beyond the bloggerati. There's only one thing you can do with it.

I thought Facebook was stupid when I first joined it as well, what with all the poking and sending of animated flowers going on. Truth be told, the only thing that kept me coming back in the beginning was Scrabulous (now Lexulous). Each time I returned to play games with my friends, I would also discover some other feature that I liked—videos being shared, funny status line updates, the built-in e-mail feature. (Twitter theoretically has the latter as well, but the 140-character limit makes direct messages virtually useless for any meaningful conversation.)

Today, like many of my why-would-I-want-to-join-Facebook friends, I'm addicted to the dang thing. And while I've had friends tell me that they're now addicted to Twitter, I'm wondering how long someone can stay enamored of posting 140-character blurbs.

So, having said all this, am I about to become a Qwitter any time soon? No. I'm definitely planning to stick around to see what happens next. And while I wouldn't worry too much at the moment if you're not using it, if you were to ask me if you should, I would recommend you sign up just to see how it works. Because even if Twitter itself doesn't end up living up to its hype, you know that there are plenty of other companies out there just waiting to take its place as the "next big thing." And, when it comes to technology, each new thing you learn helps you with the next one. (Or, as NBC likes to say, "The More You Know...")

Posted in Messaging, My Two Cents, Privacy/Security, Social Media, Twitter, User Interface