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Disclaimer: If you have no interest in iPhone apps, Twitter, or my opinion on software, you will want to skip this entry.

Long ago I used Twitteriffic for iPhone, and was perfectly happy with it. I only defected to Tweetie because the iPhone app offered Ping.fm integration, allowing me to utilize Ping.fm to update multiple networks all at once, and not only status updates, but blogging, micro-blogging, and photo uploads. The fact that Tweetie offered Ping.fm integration was big for me: I could read tweets and also update multiple services, all from one nice UI.

Then Tweetie became seriously unstable, crashing more often than not, and around the same time Courtney told me about Birdfeed, an app developed by a good friend of hers. Birdfeed’s UI was far superior to Tweetie’s, plus it had local caching, and though I was loathe to give up Ping.fm integration, it wasn’t of much use to me in its current state. I figured I’d catch Tweetie 2.0 when it was released.

When Tweetie 2.0 was released, Ping.fm integration was written out of it. Ping.fm-loving Tweetie users were upset. Some felt betrayed, and in an open-source world, there is always another client for betrayed users to buy. Those of you with greater marketing experience than I have should feel free to comment on the changing face of customer loyalty.

Tweetie employees had been using GetSatisfaction, a well-known customer support community engine, and of course a number of “what happened to Ping.fm” threads broke out on it. No one from the company answered clearly, and instead asked people why they wanted the integration. One Tweetie employee was quoted as stating the following about wanting to update multiple networks simultaneously: “It always calls to mind a small child repeating the same thing ad nauseum. Essentially wasting the time of all the people who actually like you enough to follow you on multiple networks.” (As of this writing, I cannot verify this quote because GetSatisfaction will no longer allow me to go further back in this conversation. I can, however, point you to where the employee states that he has “some well known negative ideas about Ping.fm”.

Now I don’t need to point out the logical flaw in this argument, but I will anyway for the sake of thoroughness: not all of my contacts are on the same network. For example, NO ONE I know from Second Life is on Twitter; they are all on Plurk. I don’t want to stop updating Twitter in favor of Plurk, or vice-versa. I want to update both simultaneously. Ping.fm is the tool I use to do that. Tweetie 1.0 allowed me to access to this tool. Tweetie 2.0 does not, and for no clear reason.

I disagree strongly with how Tweetie employees have chosen to handle this. The discussion continues over at their new support forums but the employee who has taken point on the issue does not seem to understand why anyone is asking for Ping.fm integration. He repeatedly asks people to tell him why, a tactic I recognize as a favorite of ineffective management. This tactic eventually wears your opponents down enough that they either (a) lose the ability to articulate what it is they want because they are so frustrated with your (real or feigned) ignorance or (b) give up because you are obviously too stubborn to even entertain an opposing opinion, let alone adopt a better idea.

Obviously I won’t buy or recommend Tweetie 2.0, which is a shame because it could have been the best Twitter app available. Instead, I will use a combination of apps until someone figures out how to do what Tweetie was already doing, and does it before they can do it again.

In this episode, Matt and I discuss Facebook and Twitter. I also misuse the word “demographic”, overuse the words “literally” and “honestly”, and make up a whole new word — “foresaw” for the past tense of “foresee”.  There, now I don’t have to tweet about it!

We graciously accept requests for future topics, so leave a comment if you have something you are dying for us to dissect.

[Edited to add: A kind commenter pointed out that "foresaw" is a word after all! Serves me right for using a pocket dictionary offline.]

As I was about to post to my various “status dumps” today, I noticed that I have become mired in my own narrow-minded view of what this website should contain. For example, I have no problem with Twittering two sentences about my crappy day, or tossing up a short vignette on my tumblelog, yet I won’t put anything here for a month and a half.

Why is that? Why do I view this place as some sort of sanctuary while the others receive my most scurrilous thoughts?

Ten years ago, when I started my online journal, the shorter-format tools did not exist. Everything I published on the Web was in essay format, and perhaps my writing was at its highest quality then. In 2000, when I discovered LiveJournal, I was much more comfortable with the immediate, shorter bursts of less-than-prose; most of my online friends were congregating there and participating in multiple conversations at once, so I had to be faster than usual to be a part of it.

That format became too participation-focused for me, and so I withdrew to my own domain, literally and figuratively, where my plodding pace and tone were old standards. I am intrigued from time to time by services like Twitter and Plurk, which make virtual soapboxes even tinier and more portable, mostly because I enjoy receiving news briefs on my friends, and to some extent the status update has taken the place of the email and the instant message.

And even this, a speedy meta-post to reengage my tradition of mildly oversharing, has taken me much too long to assemble.  There is too much meta in my online life, too much explanation and justification that does not exist offline, so I avoid the quagmire entirely.

There is no neat ending for this thread, but sleep will fit nicely in this pause.