It’s ironic that the day London is declared the Capital of Twitter (or at least the largest critical mass of twitter users in one place) that Twitter goes down. So where did everyone go as an alternative?
So used am I to Twitter and Tweetdeck that I suddenly found myself trying to use Facebook like Twitter. Instead of replying to the comments on my Facebooks status update that I was suddenly back in Facebook after a long time away – I found myself wanting to create more status updates and @reply individuals. Not possible.
I then tried Friendfeed. In theory everyone I subscribe to on Twitter is there because I loaded the people I follow into the site a while back – but the place was oddly quiet apart from a few from a few geeks I’d expect to find there. I also found I could recognise almost no-one on Friendfeed in the way that I can routinely recognise people I follow on Twitter – even people I don;t interact with that mush. The mashing up of Flickr friends, Facebook, Twitter and Gmail contacts has turned it into a mess and actually quite unusable for the main reason I use Twitter – which is to communicate in public about stuff I’m thinking about or working on.
In other words FriendFeed is now a vessel for Twitter to be poured into. If anything Facebook retains its status as a real-time platform, as least from this user’s perspective. I certainly had more response from my Facebook friends to the news of Twitter’s Failwhale that on Friendfeed, but then it’s a better known platform in London.
And another thing – I suddenly miss short URLs! Who knew I’d miss that!?
On thing about Facebook though – reading realtime status updates is hard with the current design they have. Friendfeed’s design is cleaner. But give me back my Twitter!