Something I Liked
About a week ago I started receiving some rather curious device updates from twitter. That day I had been suffering from my springtime allergies and couldn’t understand why-it was the middle of January! Miserable, I complained to TwitterTwitter
. Later on, my phone buzzed and I was presented with a text that was the following tweet from my friend Jaculynn
I had been tested for allergies twice in my life, but I’m actually not certain if either time mold or fungus was tested for. I snapped my phone shut, returning it to my pocket, and gave this possibility due consideration. Even though I was pretty sure of both that I wasn’t allergic to Mold or Fungus, and that had discovered the culprit already. (The weather had been uncharacteristically warm recently, and the trees had been tricked into blooming.)
A moment latter a thought me double checking that text, suspecting I had mis-read what it said. While it seemed like the kind of thing Jaculynn would say – I hadn’t elected to get device updates from her. Sure enough, it was Jaculyn that the tweet had come from. Now THIS is when I got excited.
Something Just Right
I had always wanted to get device updates for @Mentions. Since the early days of my Twitter use, I wondered why in the world such an option wasn’t available. Once a friend of mine (we’ll call him Kenan) tweeted something that both myself and another of his friends (we’ll call him Jordon) responded to.
The difference between myself and Jordon is that Kenan had elected to get device updates for Jordon a long time ago, whereas I had only met Kenan (as well as Jordon) recently, and so Kenan didn’t get device updates for my tweets. Kenan and Jordon then continued to converse – while I watched – and my reply was ignored, because Kenan didn’t know about it.
This is of course only one example, similar situations have many time occurred in different context. It wasn’t only for the sake of not leaving people out that wanted an option to get an SMS for every @Mention that was tweeted. I also had the personal desire to be able to answer every tweet more or less the moment it came my way. When people had something to say to or about me it was important to me, and I wanted to make sure they knew that by getting a timely reply.
Once, I worked up an alternative, but it didn’t work out so well. I created an account at Notify.Me and had it send me SMS notifications for every new item on the RSS feed I created using Twitter Search of tweets containing “@JyoNah.” The problem with that was that an essential bit of information was missing from those notifications; they didn’t include the name or twitter handle of the tweeter. Effectively, it didn’t work, and I was left hoping that Twitter would answer my prayers.
Something Gone Wrong
Just a few short days – if not a few short hours (I didn’t exactly keep track of it) after the device update from Jaculynn, my new favorite thing about SMS updates was no longer happening. Tweet after Tweet, people where including “@JyoNah” – but my phone didn’t buzz. I was disappointed – but not devastated, and after a short bit I moved on with my life.
It was a few days later that I encountered this update on status.twitter.com
It turned out that my favorite new feature wasn’t in fact, a bug. All I could think of – beside my amazed amusement - was to question WHY they had not implemented this as a feature yet. How has someone at Twitter not seen the benefit?
Shouldn’t they? Wouldn’t you find such a feature useful?
If you think @Mention device updates are a good idea;
use the hash-tag#BringBackTheBug or Copy the following and tweet it:
I think @twitter should #BringBackTheBug. Give us @Mention SMS updates. http://bit.ly/8RUuUA
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