Submitted by johnh on April 19, 2007 - 04:41.

(This one was going to be titled "Everything you like is stupid".)

So I signed up to Twitter because -- despite hating everything I heard about it -- it occurred to me that I could probably lash something interesting together using it with a radio computer playout system. Plus, if I send text messages myself it costs money, whereas if I can pump them through Twitter then Evan Williams coughs for them instead at international rates. Which serves the fucker right for coining millions of dollars making a gigantic Google pollution machine, frankly.

Except... it doesn't work.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears that there are three ways to interact with it:

1. You can manually post a message on its website and then hang around and make coffee for everyone while a rather tedious lottery plays out -- will it post after stalling for several minutes, or will it simply cause a browser timeout? I can hardly wait to find out. Oh the excitement.
2. You can send a text message to a fourteen-digit international mobile number in the UK and pay the highest data packet transfer rates available anywhere on the planet. And then Twitter will either dump your message into the ether or post it at some point convenient to itself at some unspecified point in the next 72 hours. So just like instant messaging, then, except at telegram-delivery-boy speeds not seen since the end of the 19th century. Feel the future.
3. You can sign up and talk to it over IM. This is a Zen-like experience involving
   • You typing into an IM window and then
   • Nothing happening at all. No response, no errors, no silently-activated events visible on the website. Nothing.

   The best part about this is that it's not remotely clear whether this is supposed to happen (perhaps it's one-way traffic only, there's no explanation one way or the other on the site), or not. Is it broken or just shit? What's the sound of one hand clapping? Who cares?

So, in a nutshell, for those of you who basically figured it's all a bunch of Emperor's-new-clothes bollocks and/or as pointless and vacuous as MySpace/Bebo/ADD-ME-PLZ-ASL-ILITERAT-TXTSPK-WNKRS.com...

...you were right.

To the rest of you Irish tech types who've all bought into this Kool-Aid hook, line and sinker, I've got a very serious question or two. Where the hell did your critical faculties go, then? This is total crap. If it worked I could see a couple of possible uses but it doesn't work, FFS, and a quick scan of their own 'status' account makes it very clear that I'm not just unlucky today -- it's been not-working half the time for bloody ages.

If this rubbish came from the Irish government or Eircom you'd (rightly) be tearing it to pieces. Come on, people: "trendy" isn't an excuse.

Update, some time after the writing: One of the dozen-or-so messages I typed into IM just turned up, out of sequence, 53 minutes after I typed it. Whoopee-doo.

Update 2, shortly after that: There's a star graphic next to updates. When you hover the mouse over it it says nothing at all. Click on it and it lights up. Click again and it un-lights. What the hell is that then? And am I the only one who finds it laugh-out-loud funny that this appears on my monitor mere millimetres from the message "© 2007 Obvious"?

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