Twitter for iPhone version 3.3 was released yesterday with a few changes. Here is their change list.
– Quick Bar, shows trends and other important things without leaving your timeline! Swipe the Quick Bar left/right to cycle through trends
– Trends based on your location
– Cleaner, redesigned Tweet compose screen.
– Automatically shortens URLs. Just paste them in and they will only count as 20 characters, no matter how long they are!
– Autocomplete @usernames and hashtags
– Easier photo uploading
– Find friends using your phone’s contacts
– Improved DM conversation view, now works similar to SMS/Chat
– Cleaned up preferences
– Bug fixes
This seems like a good list of updates for a point release. I just learned that the way Twitter shortens URLs now takes away bit.ly functionality. This pretty much sucks and is not really the point of my article but I thought that it would be good to mention that Twitter is running out of straws with me when it comes to their iPhone app. First they give away prime real estate to “popular tweets” then collapse my saved searches, then they take away support for bit.ly for their own shortening tool (in both the Mac version and iPhone version) and now this new “quick bar” has really hit me hard. I feel very compelled to install a competing Twitter client after today’s update. Let me explain what quick bar is and how much it sucks.
Twitter’s Trending Topics are Useless. Those aren’t even my words. You can read more on the subject here, here , here and here. Robin Wauters of Techcrunch takes the words right out of my mouth with this 2009 post:
Today, when you look at Twitter’s trending topics, you’ll notice that the large majority of trends are memes started by a single user or a group of users, with the main goal offering entertainment rather than spreading information. That’s all fine and dandy – no harm in having fun – and I realize well that Twitter’s trending topics are not necessarily required to be giving you and me an overview of stuff that really matters, but I can’t help but think it’s a pity that that list is starting to turn into the top 10 of chain letters people used to circulate through e-mail messages in the late nineties.
I remember back in 2009 when my friend Daniel’s day conference, “Teens in Tech Conference” actually surpassed “super bowl” as a trending topic. Sure, Twitter had a more geek focused audience back then but that was pretty astounding. A small 200 person conference would never become trending these days. This isn’t a rant where I complain about the good ole days and get all hipster on you about using Twitter before it was cool. I’m just saying that Twitter is now mainstream and mainstream means that trending topics are full of celebrity gossip, useless hashtags and shit that I don’t care about.
Today’s Trending Topics:
#blackpeoplemovies , #coisasderetiro , #tigerblood , Acoustic Aftermath ,
Frying Nemo , Fun Race , Jack Horner , Blade Runner , Bandra , Massu
Yeah, those all sound pretty awesome *sarcasm*
For the past 18 months, I haven’t paid a bit of attention to trending topics. They’re useless. Twitter has done a lot of work to improve Trending topics including making them more timely and relevant and now they are on the front page of Twitter.com, on the sidebar, on the iPhone app and on search.twitter.com. Unless you use a 3rd party app, Trending Topics are already shoved down your throat whether you like it or not. Why? Well, Twitter claims it’s because the service is an information engine allowing for real-time blah blah blah and trending topics are the pulse of “what’s happening right now” The truth is, Twitter has a product called Promoted Tweets where, for $100,000 per tweet, any company can buy a tweet that sits as the top search result on any trending topic. A company can buy a tweet to go on a currently trending topic like Justin Bieber for a smooth 100K or they can promote their own Trending topic like Ford can buy #FordFiesta and have it sit at the top of the trending topic list for as long as they want.
In short, Twitter makes money by showing us Trending Topics in as many places as possible.
Twitter’s new “quick bar” sits on the main stream view of Twitter’s iPhone app showing current trending topics starting with numero uno which is a “promoted topic” like “Google HotPot” which has been #1 nearly all week. Google pays Twitter to promote their new product and Twitter places that topic with a big “Promoted” button at the top of my iPhone app 24/7 and if I use Twitter.com, I also see it. It won’t be long before quick bar makes its way to the Macintosh application as well.
Let’s say that Twitter wasn’t making money by showing Trending topics everywhere. Let’s say there were no promoted tweets or promoted trends. I still find this feature absolutely useless. Since 2009, trending topics are celebrity gossip and fantasy hashtags like #3wordsaftersex and have absolutely zero interest to me but now, thanks for Twitter’s innovation, I have to see the trending topics every time I open the iPhone app in a horrifically large black bar.
This is the single worst thing Twitter has ever done with their service and you can add another nail to the coffin for me using Twitter for iPhone & Mac. Tweetie was a fantastic piece of software and Twitter is destroying the simplistic beauty and functionality of this application with every update.
Now, what’s your favorite Twitter app for iPhone? I need some recommendations.
On my Mac and PC I’m moving back to TweetDeck as my preferred client. As far as mobile I’ve been using Osfoora with zero issues, and last night I was introduced to Tweetlogix.
On my Mac and PC I’m moving back to TweetDeck as my preferred client. As far as mobile I’ve been using Osfoora with zero issues, and last night I was introduced to Tweetlogix.
Thanks. I’m gonna give Echofon a try first as it comes highly recommended. On my PC, I use Seesmic. Wish there was a really good native Twitter client for mac.
Thanks. I’m gonna give Echofon a try first as it comes highly recommended. On my PC, I use Seesmic. Wish there was a really good native Twitter client for mac.