End of Twitter Dilemma

I used Twitter for several years, preferring it to Facebook because Twitter was different. But recently Twitter decided to start inserting image previews into the timeline. You can turn off this "feature" in cell-phone clients, but not in the web-browser. For me, this makes using Twitter in the browser to be not worth doing.

When Twitter first began, they promoted their service as an open API and a bunch of people rushed in to collaborate. There were several good clients and a bunch of affiliated services. (I particularly liked the Mac client "Nambu".) But then Twitter began to pull back. They gradually placed such onerous restrictions that all of the good clients, including Nambu, were killed off.

For me the value proposition of Twitter was high enough that even when my preferred client died, I transitioned to the web-based client to keep using it. I also used the client application on my iPhone and Android device. But I spend most of my computing time at a computer -- not using a phone. That means, I now end up checking Twitter only once or twice a day.

When I only check Twitter once or twice a day, it loses a lot of the immediacy it had for me. I don't know how often I checked twitter before, but I suspect it was closer to every hour or two. When you do that, there are a manageable number of tweets to check. When you only check in the morning and evening, there are way too many to read at one sitting.

Unfortunately, without Twitter, I'm now left without any social media outlet I find tolerable. Neither Facebook nor Google Plus are any better. It's a dilemma. But not a very serious one, I'll grant you.