OK, so, here’s the thing about new Twitter and me. When it first showed up, I gave it a try, and I thought, “Heyyy, this is kind of cool!”
I am no longer using new Twitter.
So somewhere in that spectrum there probably lies a logical, thought-out reaction. Somewhere, deep inside, I can segment what I liked (at first) and what ultimately turned me off. You get to witness that thought process.
What I like
Bear in mind that I’ve never gotten on the Seemic or Hootsuite bandwagon, so I am not used to columns in my Twitter world. I think I kind of liked having columns at first because it was, well, different. And kind of neat.
If 1 of your friends is talking to another of your friends, you can jump in and reply to both of them very easily. Hitting “reply” includes both usernames. Convenient if you really do want to respond to both or several people.
I like the fact that you can see lots of recent tweets from a person if you click the little arrow. It’s really hard to keep track of people in a Twitter stream, so I was discovering a lot of tweets I didn’t know people were making (this also made me kind of sad, because it showed me that I’m out of touch with lots of people)
What made me switch it off
As you probably know if you’ve been popping by my blog for awhile, chats are a big thing for me. I really feel they are important. The new Twitter interface makes chatting really hard. Let me explain why.
When I go into a chat, I do a search for the hash tag, but then I jump over to my “replies” section to make sure I’m catching any bits of the conversation directed at me. Well, in new Twitter, when you’re “in the conversation,” your replies page link disappears. I don’t really understand the logic to this, but it was a huge turn-off to me.
Another turn-off, ironically, is something that I liked at first – the two columns. As nice as it is to be able to click the little arrow and see more about a certain person and his or her tweet, that information stays on the right hand column once you go back to perusing your Twitter stream. I find that kind of confusing. I get distracted by the information on the right and lose track of what I’m doing in the left column (maybe this is a challenge on the part of Twitter to see if we can handle two columns of changing information well. If so, I failed).
I also don’t really like the new placement of things. I think the search bar “pops” more on the right-hand side. It’s kind of buried up at the top in the new version. I think the interface is just a bit more tricky than “old” Twitter.
So that’s my review…pretty eh. It’s not terrible, and at least there aren’t (so far as I can tell) major privacy ramifications like when Facebook makes changes. Still, I think I’ll be hanging with “old Twitter” for awhile longer.
image by a d. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/okiesurfer
Loved the review and I know what you mean! I tried it out and it didn’t sit too well for me. The interface seemed a little confusing to me. However, I do use HootSuite so maybe I’m biased! 🙂
I have noticed that once you go hootsuite, you don’t go back. I think they brainwash their users! 🙂
Margie
great review as I looked at it, stayed for a few minutes and ran back to my beloved tweetdeck. I am a columns person. I like the info right where I set it up. If someone retweets me, I go and check out their profile to see if they have a blog, what else they are tweeting. But I do not manually. I click on it and use it the way that I need to. I move so fast sometimes that even a little bit of distraction in the peripherial vision is enough.
Thank you as you saved me time from going and spending a butt load of time on it as I know even more now that I will not be spending time on the new twitter. I will remain loyal to my tweetdeck!
@SuzanneVara
yeah, there is a lot of patterend behavior we build in without realizing it, isn’t there? I guess a lot of what I do is kind of automatic pilot now. When I have to think about what I am doing, I get totally flummoxed 🙂
I guess I’m one of the people on the other side of the fence, as I actually really enjoy #NewTwitter. It did take me a little bit of time to get used to it, but once I adjusted, I liked it a lot better than the original version.
Still, I understand where you’re coming from. It isn’t exactly all it’s hyped up to be, but I still think it’s a vast improvement on old Twitter.
RE: Hootsuite, you should try it out if you ever have to manage a client’s Twitter account. It’s really useful for managing multiple Twitter accounts (e.g. yours, a client’s, another client’s, etc.)
I have heard nothing but good things about Hootsuite, but I don’t think I need it for now. Despite all of my personalities, I still just use 1 Twitter account 🙂
“Despite all of my personalities…”—ha ha.
Well, yes, it would come in as pretty useful for multiple personalities now that I think about it.
Hmmm…ideas….ideas. 😉