Musings and Wankery: Early November, 2009: My Twitter account issue update (*sigh* and *yawn*) and the Twitter vs. FriendFeed "debate"

So, here's the scoop on the "my account was suspended" SOS I posted on Sunday.

I was playing around on Twitter at my husband's place Sunday morning when, at 9:00 AM on the DOT, I couldn't use my Echofon addon in Firefox anymore.  I went to my Twitter page to see what was going on, and I saw two huge words in red stating "Account Suspended"

Whiskey...Tango...Foxtrot??!?!?!

Immediately, I went on the prowl for a Twitter help request form, found one (I had to "google" it, peeps) filled it out, and submitted it. 

After raving all over most of my soc-net accounts about it for an hour, I found I had access to it again, but my counts on the side looked like this:

Oh jeez!  I guess I should be lucky I was only following a few hundred people and only had a few hundred followers right?

So, I went through the process of adding people back to my following list when my access got shut down again, the "Account Suspended" appearing in harrowingly bright letters at the top of my account stream again!

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!

I eventually found out that I was not the only one going through this.  It took a day for Twitter to resolve my issue with them, stating that my account had been mistakenly been added to others marked for deletion on Friday night, that they were sorry for the inconvenience, and all of that. But my followers, followings are still...all....gone.

Strangely enough, I still have access to lists I've created or follow. 

I tried to get twitter to rectify the count issue on the original request, but "ginger", the person assigned my help ticket, ended up duping her initial response in reaction to my followup.  From what I gather, this told me they were not interested in pursuing my count issue until I opened a new ticket.  Which I did. *sigh*

So, needless to say, even though I got my Twitter account back, my account is still all fucked up.  I've had about 20 people try to subscribe to me today, and me to them.  No dice.  I didn't show up on their feed, and only a couple of them were showing up on mine.

I'm going to give this account a few days to right itself.  If I can't get my old follows and followers back, I may very well nuke the account and start over with a new one.  It'll be hard to replicate 2 years and almost 5,000 tweets, most of which pretty much about nothing but empty-headed amusement.  But I guess I'm just going to have to try *sob*.   Right now, it truly feels as if I really am talking into a void.

And to think it was a non-techie-nerd who introduced me to this service.  Had she ANY idea of what she started...

So what does all of this have to do with FriendFeed?

Well, I started posting on FriendFeed yesterday morning.  I have to admit that I really missed posting on the service, but I needed to get away for a while, because some of the actions on the boards there were getting to me and I needed to get away before I gave someone a digital slap for apparent reason.  I then saw a lot of people proclaiming their love for FriendFeed on my home stream and that they didn't care if it was techy or not, busy or not, or what not.

I then discovered why:

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friendfeed.com</div>

Now, I don't mind Robert Scoble.  I think I've stated in my old WordPress blog that I've followed him since he started blogging as a Microsoft a few years ago.  I respect his opinion on many things, and respect that he has a right to his opinion on many things.

Here's where we disagree, however.

Every service, to be successful for you, involves engagement.  Some folks feel more comfortable chatting with each other in sound bytes of 140 characters or less.  Others feel like sharing something more substantial.  FriendFeed, despite having just been purchased by Facebook, still offers it's long time and hardcore users the ability to elucidate on topics, discussions, post articles, pictures and even files (mp3s, google docs and others).   I've seen these incredible relationships spawn on FriendFeed that I barely saw on Twitter.  I saw these friendships grow so large and so passionate that these users felt they had known each other all their lives. 

Even when you share via articles, images, et. al. you are getting a window into the world of the person posting them.  You can't say much about that on Twitter.

A few more things about FriendFeed vs. Twitter:

1.  FriendFeed is hardly ever down.

2.  FriendFeed never loses your followers

3. FriendFeed always listens to your feedback

4.  FriendFeed always shares it's breakfast with you after a night of hot, passionate sex (just kidding about that one).

I still like Twitter, and will continue to use it (either with the account that I do have, once I get it fixed, or with a new one).  Most of my IRL and Soc Net friends are on it, and they like to keep up that way.  But after this weekend of  major glitches and just passable support, I'm team Friendfeed.  Until the day Facebook ultmately pries my account from my cold, dead hands.

yay.

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