Direct messaging is one of Twitter’s weakest features. On a platform that is fundamentally about public conversation, this is a one-to-one private messaging system – except it isn’t private – it’s just direct. The new Twitter has improved the messaging interface, but this is only superficial improvement; DMs are a flawed feature at a much lower level.
In descending order of interestingness and importance, here are a few things you may not know about Twitter DMs.
- All third party applications you authorize can read your DMs *
- Deleting a DM you’ve sent or received also deletes it from the other person’s account;
- Deleting DMs sends some Twitter clients into a confused frenzy;
- DMs don’t have a ‘reply to’ ID, so they can’t be threaded properly;
- The new Twitter interface only loads your most recent 100 messages;
- I’ve written a tool for backing up and deleting all your DMs – imaginatively titled DM Cleaner.
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I just posted about the Facebook Places UK rollout, but in an effort to try and keep my posts shorter I just talked about privacy.
As a developer, what interests me the most right now is how Facebook Places affects the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla. These companies brought the checkin into our vocabulary, and with only a few million users between them it would be easy at first glance to declare them defunct.
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Facebook Places rolled out to UK users today. This comes a month after the ‘global’ press launch a month ago. That’s the thing about the World Wide Web, people get disappointed when you say your product is only available in the US. But anyway it’s here now, so our tabloids can unleash the hounds, our social media experts can blog their hearts out, and I can finally find out where my ex-girlfriend gets her hair cut.
Please hold for media storm on privacy ..
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Last night Twitter announced a new version of their main website, quickly dubbed #NewTwitter.
I’ve not seen the interface first hand as yet, it will be rolled out over the usual undefined period of time. As with previous features, such as “who to follow”, it may even flick on and off – who knows. There are a number of features I’m curious to see, such as whether they’ve added full geo support, i.e. adding of ‘places’.
But I digress; these new features and all the whooping over slick new interfaces are not what this post is about. What interests me is what Twitter are doing with their brand, how it affects the developer ecosystem and why the hell anyone would attempt to base a business on the Twitter platform.