Dear Ms. Mr. Anonymous...about followers

Dear Ms. Mr. Anonymous

Thank you for the interesting comment/feedback you made to my complaint/kvetch regarding the Twitter ‘following/count’ situation. While it's true that it’s a free service, one wonders if the service would be better if users had to pay for it. Perhaps yes or perhaps it would be the same. We'll never know unless - heaven forbid - they start charging to tweet.

In your comments to my blog comments, you wrote:
“In the end, does it really matter whether anyone has 150 followers? Or 151? For most people, the follower count naturally fluctuates from one login/visit to another. That's just the way things work. Seriously, who cares?"

Can't speak for other Twitter users but actually, I obviously care as do many others who have added their names to the Twitter complaint lists. The fact that Twitter features the "following" and "follower" ...whatever you call them, means that there are others "out there" in Twitter-land, who feel the same way. As proof of this, singer John Mayer and Ashton Kutcher were determined to have the distinction of acquiring 1 million followers. Why, if this wasn’t important, would they make a point of attempting to get tweeters to follow them? Apparently, having people follow them was an indication of their success. See what I mean? In fact, many celebrities use Twitter to promote their popularity and increase their status.

So y'see, Ms. Mr. Anonymous - followers are important to some of us.

You also commented:
"Twitter is a great way to connect: Use it for its intended purpose and learn to live with the little inconsistencies that crop up along the way."

On that we both agree. It is a great way to connect but it's those littler consistencies along the way that get to you, like incorrect follower count. Ask me about it.

Yours in Tweeting,

Eleanor

New day/week /month - Twitter doesn't tweet

How tweet it is - not!

Seems that Twitter is inviting its users/followers to try out their latest version of Twitter. Thanks for the invitation, Twitter, but perhaps you should attempt to solve some of the existing problems in the old version. On a personal note once again my new followers are not being recognized by Twitter. I mean, what's the use of creating a "followers" category if it doesn't follow?

This time round I decided to go through the "normal" route and attempt to voice my displeasure in their Twitter support centre. The "Missing Tweets from your Account" section advises tweeters:

"Are you missing all your tweets from your Profile page? If so, do not worry, we are aware of the issue and are working with the engineers to resolve this. We apologize for the inconvenience caused."

Somehow this doesn't make me feel better. Don't worry? Really, there are more important things in life but nevertheless, it's aggravating. New Tweeters find our tweets interesting enough to follow and because of technical glitches, Twitter refuses or can't recognize them. Somehow, the "don't worry" advice isn't exactly reassuring given their advanced technological knowledge. In an attempt to fix the problem, just added my frustration to all the other 936 comments in the "missing Tweets" section:

"Yet another attempt at getting Twitter to recognize new followers. Appreciate the update and appologies but the problem is ongoing. Please find solution."

As mentioned in the previous Twitter-related piece in this blog, there are not a lot of "followers" following me so every follower counts. The challenge is how to make Twitter react accordingly. One can only hope - and wait and wait and...

A Twitter tweet is a tweet when it tweets

Different day, still on-going problem with Twitter counts. I dunno - given my somewhat limited number of followers - compared to other people with thousands or hundreds-of-thousands of followers - everybody counts. It is for this very reason that a count verification is in order whenever another person follows me. Whenever I receive notification to this effect, it elicits a "oh super - another person is following me!" to be followed by "damn - they dropped me!" feeling if the number decreases. However, another on-problem is that in the past and once again, the "following" and "followers" columns are reversed. Any newbies are reflected in the "following" category, which is just not correct. Hence the frustration.

In order to alert Twitter tech. of this problem, there is a "contact" at the bottom of the page. Clicking on this word brings one to a sub-list of categories including "something's not working" and clicking on these three words leads one to long list of problematic situations that tweeters are experiencing. My problem is in the "following" category and further clicking leads one to "my follow count is incorrect - known issue" section with the explanation provided:

"Currently we do not have a work around to fix this problem and Support agents are unable to fix your account for you. For this reason we would appreciate it if you could leave a comment below rather than submit a help request."

There are currectly 231 tweeters who have registered a complaint in this category. Twitter prefaces the complaint list with: "UPDATE: 06/07/2010 This issue is still set to lower priority for other higher impact issues to be solved first. Thanks for your patience!"

For the record I have added my complaints to the list in the past and tweeters wait until a Twitter techie is assigned to the case and will work on solving the problem. Hopefully. On one occasion a techie provided an explanation that "followers" for whatever reason drop tweeters and this could be one explanation I suppose. It's been my experience as mentioned in a previous Twitter-related rant that once a person is followed, the followed are expected to reciprocate and if not - tough - they drop you. Another techie requested that I prove my new followers. I mean, how many people actually keep track of "blah-blah is following you" notification?

We'll see how long it takes for tech. to fix the problem, if ever. It's enough to give a tweeter "twitterfollowphoebi-itis." Ask me about it.