I’m Boycotting Twitter Until They Get Their Act Together

May 15th, 2008

So Twitter continues to go down, again today. It’s getting to the point where you can count on it happening at least once a week.

Some folks over on FriendFeed are talking about a “Twit-Out” boycott of the Twitter service next week Wednesday. Feel free to participate if these outages annoy you.

I’m going one further — I’m not using Twitter again, until they improve the uptime of their service (if ever). It’s too sporadic to be reliable. I’ll use FriendFeed exclusively until (if ever) Twitter get their act together and make stability a priortiy.

That might sound harsh, but I’m not in a sympathetic mood. I don’t care if scaling is hard. I don’t care if they’re surely trying to figure it all out. All that matters: is Twitter up when I want to use it? The answer is increasingly no, and I don’t want to patronize compaines that can’t even provide the bare minimum of service they claim to.

In this case, Twitter’s loss is FriendFeed’s gain. I’ve already written how FriendFeed has largely replaced Google Reader in my world. It looks like Twitter will be replaced as well, through their own incompetence.

Louis Gray recently wrote a few words that apply well here: “In this fast-moving industry, if you’re not fast-moving, you might as well quit.”

Having a great idea is only a small part of the startup success story. Much more important is execution, and that includes moving faster than the competition. Here, Twitter is getting a gigantic FAIL. They should be moving quickly to solve these outage problems and through PR, address the negative reputation they’re gaining as an unreliable service. Despite their great idea, the competition (FriendFeed, Pownce, Jaiku) is ready and waiting to snatch away disgruntled users.

I know one person has little effect in the larger scheme of whether Twitter survives as a company but this is my small vote saying I don’t need them as much as they need us users. I am an unhappy user. I can’t rely on their service and I don’t think it’s right to just wait patiently by for them to get their crap together. I’m outta there.

Twitter boycott begins today; see you all on FriendFeed.