Until earlier this morning, my twitter account had been ‘broken’ for the past 5 days! This meant I was unable to follow anyone back; which for someone like me, with a reputation for developing communities, is a HUGE problem! Twitter didn’t seem interested though; despite me currently being one of the top 60 most followed people on twitter!
Twitter tech support ignored me
With each passing day, the problem became more frustrating. Over 1000 people had followed me, unaware that I was unable to follow any of them back. I tried everything – I sent emails to twitter’s tech support, I sent ‘tweets’ to the tech support staff, I even contacted twitter’s boss Ev Williams. No one fixed the problem or even responded to me – no tweets, no emails, nothing!
Until….
I managed to find a contact, who knows someone at twitter and was kind enough to email them for me. Then, I sent a tweet out and everything changed – within minutes!
Twitter, Scoble and FriendFeed
My 5 day old problem was fixed within 5 minutes of me sending the message below to the 22,000 people who follow me. It basically says how Robert Scoble suggested I use FriendFeed instead of twitter – along with my FriendFeed user name (which is jimconnolly)
Boom – 5 minutes later my problem was fixed!
What I found frustrating and disappointing, was that it was not until some well-connected people got involved, that anyone listened to me. When they did, this 5 day problem was fixed in minutes.
Amazingly, within literally seconds of the fix, I received my first and only communication from twitter – a tweet that said; “It’s a bug : ( see status blog!” That post has been on the status blog for days and my problem had lasted for days – yet the fix and the only response I got from twitter, both arrived at the same time; 5 minutes after my post!
Twitter and me
I WILL continue to help YOU develop your twitter network; because for 99.9% of users, Twitter is still the amazing service I have always VERY PUBLICLY raved about. I will also continue to tweet, just like before.
However, I shall no longer be promoting my own twitter account via this blog; which is responsible for attracting so many of my followers (twitter associates) – until they invest in better tech support.
Apparently, my rush of new followers is what caused the problem.
Twitter is a wonderful facility!
I know the team at twitter work extremely hard, because I have spoken to people who have visited the offices and interviewed them! That’s why I’m going to stick around. I’m hoping that as the business model develops, some money will be invested in helping twitter’s dedicated, but overloaded tech support team. When it does, the service will be amazing!
However, based on the messages I have received since my problem started, it seems that currently, unless you have high profile contacts, are famous or your problem is very public, like the recent phishing attacks, they just don’t have the resources to respond effectively. There are exceptions to this, but my personal experience and the stack of feedback I’ve received confirms it’s a valid concern.
I can’t wait until the tech support issue is resolved and I can fall back in love with Twitter. This is only a lover’s tiff, not a divorce!
UPDATE
I just heard (10am Sunday 25th January) that Robert Scoble @scobleizer has also got the exact same problem I had; unable to follow people back. I wonder how long it will take before his problem is fixed? Will twitter fix it super fast OR will they make him wait the standard 5 days; just to make a point about how ‘evenly’ they treat all their users?
Thank you Jim for carefully detailing your twitter-crisis experience. I have seen isolated reports, such as @astrospace the other day claiming they lost all 8000 followers and their account was dead, seemingly unable to get assistance from anyone. Hopefully, your openness will allow the Twitter-owners, as well as others who periodically tweet about bugs with their accounts, to find remedies and/or help.
Agreed, Jim. Your experience was indicative of a similar bug that wound me up. The Facebook status update was not working for days. Again, no response. Despite their social networking basis, there was no involvement by anyone connected with Twitter, the status of the application was “green” and no reply to my support request was given.
Twitter need to have a business model and be made acountable. They are enjoying real success at the moment having made the breakthrough into mainstream media and now more than ever they need to prove that they are worth people’s time, which ultimately, is often worth more than a monthly subscription to help the service be supported and scaled effetively.
You know maybe if they had a paid tech support queue or something? I’d certainly be willing to pay a few $$ to have my issue addressed instead of lost in the noise.
You are not alone Jim.
This guy had a problem with his account and no one at twitter responded. So, he actually had to offer a free ipod touch, just to get someone in twitter support to fix it!
Here’s the tweet:
http://twitter.com/zaibatsu/statuses/1103424386
A sure sign things are bad, when you have to offer tech support an expensive ‘gift’ in order to get a problem looked at.
One of the people I was following had a similar problem that has not been resolved to my knowledge. @Astrospace was not as gracious as you are however. If you have time to check out his last few tweets (if the account is still open) you’ll understand what I mean.
Peace
I also had a hard time getting anyone to acknowledge the problem I am having with changing my Twitter background. While not an earth-shattering problem, the fact that no one would respond to me was frustrating. Someone finally did respond, but they have yet to fix the problem. Just because they are the current social media darling doesn’t relieve them of the responsibility of providing decent customer service.
Thanks for sharing your experiences with this. With Twitter’s poor tech communication methods, it feels like one is a little kid in the back of a bus.
I think Twitter could improve by adding those little alert messages to the Web client as they have done in the past. People still don’t know to look for info on the Twitter blog.
Some interesting feedback, thanks.
It seems that there ‘might’ be a business model here, whereby twitter provide the service for free, but charge for tech support and maybe additional functionality.
I would certainly have paid to get my problem fixed sooner.
What about twitter charging everyone with more than a certain number of followers?
I just hope they start to support the service, before people start leaving in bigger numbers.
Well, it IS a free service, and a pretty good one at that. But I agree with Nathan. Twitter needs to quickly find a way to monetize so they can handle the massive growth they’re experiencing.
Christy,
Everyone knows Twitter is free.
Of course, as I have been told many times today, they have already had millions of dollars invested in them!
This is what happens when a service get’s too big and doesn’t make any money.
I can see friendfeed in a few months will be somewhere in a similar place.
You’ve definately been more gratious than @astrospace. This is a prime example (to me) of what happens when you get too big, too fast. Just ask @MrTweet.
Thanks for your article. I’m off to use Friendfeed. I heard Scoble talk about it on the TWIT podcast. I’m not a person with a thousand followers, just a few friends, so my problem of not being able to change my picture will never show up on their radar. Just frustrated that customer support is so bad, since that is what I do for a living. The best way to deal with that is to stop using the service. Friendfeed is the way to go.
Robyn,
I knew about @astrospace having thousands of his followers deleted by twitter.
Never knew about all the trouble @mrtweet had though. Thanks for sharing!
It seems it was only people who gained very large follower numbers, very quickly, who had the problem I experienced. Also, only seems to have hit those of us who follow people back.
It’s unfortunate, but these things will continue to happen until twitter has the proper support staff in place.
The way I look at, if a service is free, then I think a (nominal) service fee for expedited or priority customer service is reasonable.
If I pay for a service (clearly not the case with twitter), then I think there should be no fee for customer support.
JMO.
I guess when you are a little fish you don’t have toworry about overloading problems… LOL
I’m sure twitter and the successful apps are learning by the hour… cool that it’s not a divorce, that would be ugly; I mean who would get the kids I mean twitter followers!
Thanks for explaining, Jim. It’s a shame that sometimes you have to “know somebody” to get your problem taken care of.
so after thinking about it for awhile I’ve decided that things like these situations and problems are the price for ‘free’ services. If there was money riding on it via ads or paid accounts the company would be a lot more motivated to fix issues. Since we don’t pay in cash we have to pay in lower quality service and prolific spam. The problem with Web 2.0 is that everyone feels like we deserve all these services for free, it’s not a very good business model and we’re spoiled by it now.
Twitter has had stability issues as long as I’ve used it.
I suspect they spend most of their time trying to keep the system from falling over completely as more and more people sign up.
Twitter’s simplicity is what makes it so alluring, they are raising money based on a vision where the majority of people communicate using Twitter.
No matter what Twitter says all Twitter users are beta testers helping Twitter to shake out and test their design. Twitter can’t charge either users or advertisers yet because the system isn’t stable enough and I suspect the reason you didn’t get a response from Twitter was because they knew about your problem but were busy working on other larger issues. The response would have been “We know about your problem, but we have other fish to fry first”
Every twitter user has to decide whether they are happy with being beta testers, things aren’t going to change unless and until a credible Twitter replacement comes along and people start moving off Twitter.
I don’t think Friendfeed is it though, it doesn’t have the clean simplicity of Twitter and since Twitter was the first microblogging service to really get some traction Twitter has the critical mass of users and is going to be difficult to unseat. The fact that we all put up with Twitter’s idiosyncrasies shows that Twitter has got the winning combination for now.
Wayne,
An excellent comment, thanks.
I think you are right, that just ‘keeping it together’, is what consumes most of twitter’s tech resources.
I also agree that FriendFeed is more complicated than it needs to be.
Thanks again!
Thanks for sharing your experience Jim. I think it’s important to highlight customer service issues; especially when they help a service resolve its issues in a timely manner.
Interesting!
I just heard that Robert Scoble has now got the exact same problem I had.
I don’t know if this really is a database problem as Twitter say, or if they are making a point, but it’s certainly a concern.
I wonder if they will fix his issue faster than the 5 days it took to fix mine or if they will use this as an example of how ‘evenly’ they look after all their users ?
I will, literally, keep you posted.
“despite me currently being one of the top 60 most followed people on twitter!”
So follower count = importance?
Is this why Scoble and Bill Austin have created separate accts recently? Just curious.
As a newb making some investments in Twitter (my time is WAY more expensive than a subscription fee if there was one), what you share concerns me just a little…
Thx for the nod to FriendFeed.
Brian,
Nope – It just equals ‘reach.’
When I had 30 followers, few people would have known about my problem. By tweeting it to 22,000, it reached a lot more people; many of whom retweeted it.
My listing on Twitterholic.com has already started to drop, since removing my twitter button from the blog and not linking to my twitter account from posts.
Roger,
Who knows? Sometimes people have two accounts, so they can tweet on two different subjects.
Good for you for getting it fixed. i tried to get an issue with my DM’s resolved, emailed and sent tweets. Was emailed a link to check on my claim’s progress. Big surprise when i checked back a couple days later to read that my issue had been resolved and the case closed.
Only problem, the issue is not resolved and apparently not going to be. I lost patience and gave up and am just living with my odd DM’s. I hope you’re right that through time twitter’s tech support gets better.
Katherine,
Thanks for the comment, sorry your problem’s still not resolved.
I certainly hope Twitter decides to invest in better tech support.
It is what it is – a free service, The technical complexity of what they are trying to do alone makes it highly probable that it will have intermittent problems, assuming that they can even keep it up.
That of course does not lessen the dilemma for any of us when they have any number of problems. I can think of several more aggravating than the one that you describe.
But it is pretty tough to be too critical when you consider the social contract – a free service for our indulgence. They get it right over a period of time.
Frankly, I have used Friend Feed for quite awhile and am not in love with it for many reasons. Also a free service, it is not nearly as simple nor as elegant and as a community is much more narrow and limiting than twitter.
So the best bet is to pray that Twitter somehow figures it out – gets to a business model that makes sense, and can even pull this off technically. I am not convinced that it can be done – but maybe.
In the mean time, it is what it is and though frustrating, we have to moderate our expectations. I know that as much as I enjoy it, I definitely don’t expect much and for sure, I don’t expect support. (though would love to have it).
BTW Reminds me of an experience with Apple and Mobile Me last year where Apple in implementing a paying service took down many users, and bloggers who were using I Web for over 3 weeks. Was inherently unstable. But talk about painful – and that was Apple.
The other thing Jim that you have to consider, you look at it as you providing value to the network through 20,000 followers. But the value runs in both directions. You are taxing the system by broadcasting and reaching 20,000 followers – a tremendous value to you that you are receiving for free – just saying.
The dilemma that twitter must have is that if they made it a paying service, they would lose many of those 20,000 who have relatively small networks which is true for 90 percent of twitter members.
So members like yourself, who you accurately point out are few – you are one of 60 – benefit again from the fact that twitter is not a paying service. And if it were could it be supported by that 60 or even 60,000?
Proportionality?
Kim,
Thanks for your comments – You clearly spent a lot of time writing them, which I REALLY appreciate!!!
As you know, from reading my post and the comments I have made here, I agree with your two main points.
Twitter is great, I LOVE twitter, as you know.
Secondly, people like me do place a far greater load on twitter; which is why, as I have said in the post, I am no longer growing my network.
Look at what’s just happened to @scobleizer, he’s now got the exact same problem I had!
If twitter gave me the option to pay a fair price to get issues fixed, I would gladly pay – like most people.
Thanks again for sharing your ideas Kim!
Really sorry to hear about the way you were treated Jim!
It shows that, although Twitter have clearly got the model right – they are supplying something we all want and need – an easy, multi-platform route to connect with each other – they haven’t got the infrastructure right yet.
Hardly surprising – quality support comes at a price, and if you ain’t making the money, you can’t provide the quality!
There is no doubt in my mind that this infrastructure is a taste of the future it may be bought up & incorporated into something we don’t know about yet, or it may be monetised and strengthened in a more transparent fashion, we’ll see.
All should understand that FriendFeed is a great AGGREGATOR – it just brings other feeds all together into one place, and as such it is a great tool, especially when you use the “Real Time” setting!
Flock is another tool, if you need a new browser that handles Social media and Networking in one place, on your desktop.
We have a lot of choice – one size doesn’t suit all!
We are living every day on the edge at the moment – awaiting the next discovery – a really exciting time to be around!
Your experience has shown that, whilst we can’t always rely on the tools, we can often rely on the new contacts we make using those tools.
That’s what progress should be about isn’t it?
As always, keep em coming Jim!
It never ceases to astound me how unresponsive Twitter is to their community… but fortunately, when they fix things for the “bigger users” it usually also resolves it for the “smaller users” so that the solution works for everyone.
But it’s just bizarre that one of the premier ‘social’ networks is so antisocial.
I find it interesting that many believe ignoring obvious errors and usability issues is ok as long as you’re a free service. Excellence is important even then and especially if you wish to monetize eventually.
The scalability issues are a more complex issue and the same folks that think usability issues that could be fixed quickly and easily are ok expect them to handle growth without a hitch?
I posted about some of these obvious, long-standing issues including the incorrect error message we get when we’re stuck at the arbitrary 2,000 following limit.
I wonder if your connection could help us with THAT one; maybe change the algorithm for those of us who are NOT auto-following and are active, quality users.
Perhaps we can get Paul over at FriendFeed to listen to our input so that we can connect at FF and won’t need Twitter.
Glad your problem got resolved. As in much of life, it isn’t what you know; it is WHO you know. I’m off to make sure I’m subscribed to you at FF.
I have tried for a few hours to stupidly change my Twitter Profile’s photo of me as well as trying to upload a new image for the background of my profile. I did have a Killer Gretch Guitar as the background and should have left it alone because I can not place another of my images but I can change sold colors for a profile background.
Please,can you help me?
Thank You!
so basically it sounds like I’m out of luck. i started my account a while ago, am not aggressive about it, and now that I have a problem, I’ll be ignored?
I went to change my username, and I input my new one, which is said was available. Unfortunatley, I forgot to put in my password, so my username didn’t change.
Now it tells me the username is not available – obviously because I already took it, but now it’s buried in the system instead of connected to me.
Any recourse that anyone knows or can think of?
Thanks in advance
Judi