A Little More on the War Against the Mobile Web
This morning I wanted to focus my comments on the abuses dished out by the media and news companies, but the biggest offender is…
Twitter.
Yes, Twitter. The microblogging site where I live and breathe when I’m not here at PJMedia. Twitter is easily is worst of the bunch.
If you want to use a Twitter app, it had better be the Official Twitter App and nothing but the Official Twitter App, because Twitter has put the squeeze on developers and is forcing them off the platform. Now, I read a lot of praise for the Official Twitter App, but officially it sucks.
Why? You can’t see who’s re-tweeting your Tweets. I throw a lot of one-liners out on Twitter, and I need to know what works. And the way to find that out is to see if people (and how many people) are giving it the old RT. But that’s classified info on the Twitter app.
So just load up your mobile browser, right? Wrong. That info is locked down there, too.
Why? F***-all if I know. (Sorry. I watched The Commitments last night again.)
Anyway, Twitter has become useless to me on mobile, and for reasons I can’t figure out and they won’t reveal. I suspect the problem lies in the fact that Twitter’s board members think they have the next multibillion-dollar website, when in fact it’s “merely” a multimillion-dollar website. And they’re going to drive it down the tubes trying to make it something it isn’t.
Twitter spam is already a problem. If they opened up the API… it would become useless.
You can’t see when you get retweeted? I get alerted every time someone retweets me, direct messages me, mentions me, or favorites my tweets. I can even see when people I follow favorite things. I wonder why you’re not getting that information. Maybe a setting is off?
Also, oddly enough, I only use twitter on my iphone. I almost never do it on my laptop or even ipad.
Yeah, I like their phone app. It’s their iPad app I gave up on months ago.
(Although I’m reading maybe the new version is much better. I’ll give it a shot and report back.)
“The Commitments” is good – but rent “The Guard” and prepare to be blown away. Best import to come out of Ireland since Guinness (but Guinness, as we all know, sucks in the states anyway).
Stephen, I apologize for the off-topic, but did I miss the unveiling of the new banner? Looks sharp.
Tweetbot for ipad, my favorite and I’ve tried MANY
Give Hootsuite a try….I use it on all my electronic goodies.
Amen to your distaste of Twitter’s iOS app.
My workaround is to use Atomic Browser on my iPad. One of its optional settings is to ID itself as the desktop version of Safari. That allows me to access Twitter as if I were using a Mac.