The Iconogoraphy of Twitter

Michael Arrington rails against Twitter and praises Friendfeed over here, arguing that there has been a less infuriated response to the switchoff of the replies feature:

So why aren’t people screaming about the feature being gone? Because this time, they’re just heading

over to Friendfeed to have those very same conversations. Friendfeed for most users was just a place to bookmarks all their activities on other social networks. Now, more and more, it’s a place that people start conversations. The early adopters got that a while ago. Now, the not so early adopters are using it as a Twitter replacement, too.

He's wrong of course - the reason there is no sturm und drang is because its another opportunity to enjoy viewing the iconic Fail Whale:



Its on T shirts, posters, coffee cups - without a Fail Whale, Friendfeed cannot succeed

The thing about Twitter is it also has a huge user base, go elsewhere like Friendfeed and you have far fewer people to talk to. The A-List Broadcasters clearly want this to happen methinks (listen to ME, not each other) but thats not by and large what most people want - or are doing. As a number of commentators noted on the TechCrunch article in fact, using a simple service to increase Twitter persistence, such as Summize, is a far better option.

(Also, I don't understand why people think that a system with the same properties plus bigger messages will scale any differently? Twitter at least has $15m now to build out the new systems)