However, Twitter's problems aren't easily fixed. In fact, there are 5 major problems plaguing Twitter:
1- Over capacity – how many times have you tried to access Twitter only to be hit with a jovial cartoon whale that lamely apologizes for denying you of your addiction? Not unlike a bloated whale, Twitter is slowly being beach by over-capacity problems; with more and more users come more demand which is grinding on Twitter's servers and rejecting its fans. And yet, Twitter seems unable to address these demands despite tens of millions of dollars in fresh financing. The problem has forced a bottleneck for users, and some are using it less and pining for alternatives. Fortunately for Twitter, there is no credible alternative with a critical mass to challenge Twitter... yet.
2- Search – I've yet to come across a worse search engine than Twitter's search. Try and find a person by their real name and you will intimately understand this frustration. In fact, Twitter search isn't even good at searching its own user names. I operate a few accounts, and one is called “intranet2.” A search on “intranet” does not uncover this account even though it has more followers than most of the unknown users in its results pages (many of which don't have the word “intranet” in their user name). As for searching for content by keyword... forget about it; it's not worth the aggravation.
3- Crap, crap, crap – its becoming increasingly difficult to filter out the crap, and the fly-by-night Tweet spammers. My favorite of course are the Twitter wanna-be types who follow as many people as they can come across only to quickly unfollow them in an attempt to massage their egos by building a follower base. While Twitter certainly doesn't force me to follow anyone it would be nice to avoid repeated emails from the “internetmarketer” who repeatedly follows and unfollows me (I'm sure he and his partner in the Nigerian Ministry of Finance offer superlative, sage advice). While Twitter does provide a "block" feature, it may take 3 or 4 follow and unfollows before I recognize the need (through all the clutter) to go and block a follower. Furthermore, if Twitter had half a search engine, then I could seek out reasonable and credible Tweeple to follow instead of having to wait for them to find me amongst the swarms of spammers.
4- Antiquated technology – I've been on Twitter for more than a year now (an eternity in the world of demanding social media users) and its almost exactly the same. While Yammer and other services beef-up their technology and functionality, Twitter sits there and does little (or nothing). Not only is the interface overly simplistic despite its use and demand, there have been no upgrades (no discussion threads, no Re-Tweet button, no bookmarking). Nowhere are the technology limitations more noticeable than the problems with security. Hackers have taken notice of Twitter's soft approach to technology and are hammering it with viruses and worms. See Twitter under attack again (VNUnet) and Twitter riddled with worms and scams (again) (Register).
5- No (visible) business model – can we please send some grey hairs over to the Twitter HQ? Please, bring some grown-ups into the office and develop a source of revenue already, or sell it to someone who can. All of the above problems could be overcome or minimalized if it had some revenue to help address these challenges. I really enjoy Twitter, and recognize its enormous power and potential, but I'm going to leave in a heartbeat if an alternative with critical mass presents itself.
Toby Ward is an Internet and intranet consultant who lives, blogs and Tweets from Vancouver, and client locations and conferences all over North America and Europe. He is the founder and CEO of Toronto-based Prescient Digital Media. Follow him at www.Twitter.com/tobyward