Sunday, July 19, 2009

Twitter Changes “Following” and “Followers” pages

It seems today that if you view the “Following” or “Followers” pages for a
user (including yourself) some interesting new tidbits will come up.

For example, you
have the option to either view in a list or expanded list format, where previously you could only view in
expanded.

href="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_uO1cBO_SfPQ/SmOHcNYOp8I/AAAAAAAAAdI/1FU1obMtiVM/s1600-h/following_1%5B3%5D.png"> style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px"
title="following_1" border="0" alt="following_1"
src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_uO1cBO_SfPQ/SmOHfPNe46I/AAAAAAAAAdM/9879j2T_Dr0/following_1_thumb%5B1%5D.png?imgmax=800"
width="416" height="537" />

You also have two nifty buttons.  One
allowing you to add the user featured, and the other giving you multiple options.

href="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_uO1cBO_SfPQ/SmOHhy0T6cI/AAAAAAAAAdQ/cRsyzMpYx9E/s1600-h/following_2%5B4%5D.png"> style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px"
title="following_2" border="0" alt="following_2"
src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_uO1cBO_SfPQ/SmOHk7kuSMI/AAAAAAAAAdU/jy6lSBrkG1I/following_2_thumb%5B2%5D.png?imgmax=800"
width="430" height="470" />

In the screen shot above, you can see the
options to Mention, Follow, and Block.  However, if you’re already following the user you’ll also
get the option to Unfollow.

All in all, it looks like these are some nifty changes by
twitter to help expand your social graph.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Thank You, Twitter Support.

As you may or may not know, I have been slightly ranting about my twitter not
updating my Facebook status, this was especially annoying when I tried to update twitter and FB at the same
time.  I use Selective Twitter Status on Facebook in order to choose quality
content to appear on my Facebook profile (by ending such tweets with a #fb hashtag).

I
found out today that it was no longer working, because I no longer appear in Twitter Search.  (Link
for from:navarr). 
Selective Twitter Status says to try contacting Twitter Support for help, so I sent them this:


Basically, my tweets aren't appearing in Twitter Search, meaning something is
wrong. Tweets surrounding mine are, (just run a twitter search for "navarr" and see what I
mean.)

Because of this, I have been unable to use Selective Twitter Status on Facebook.


Please fix this, the help for Selective Twitter Status says:

If your updates
don't appear in the search, try protecting your updates and then unprotecting them again by ticking the box
at http://twitter.com/account/settings,
saving, and then going back and un-ticking it. You'll need to post a new tweet to test whether this worked.


If you've tried this and your tweets still don't appear in the search, you need to contact Twitter
support and ask them to fix your account so that your tweets are public and searchable.

I
did the first step, and now I'm doing the second. Please fix!

I
quickly received a reply from twitter saying:

Hi there,


Twitter has it's own Facebook app that allows your Twitter updates to post to your Facebook
profile. Find out more about using Twitter and Facebook here:
href="http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/31113">http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/31113


Thanks!
Twitter Support

I simply could not
believe what they had sent me!  It was 100% irrelevant, and only proceeded to irritate me further. 
I sent back a rather rude reply via the comments (thus re-opening my ticket as well):


That fixes my problem, how? That doesn't magically make my tweets appear in the search engine
anymore.

to which I received:

Hi,

Thanks for your email. You can search for people on Twitter by keyword, user name,
location and more. New: Twitter search in your sidebar!
href="http://help.twitter.com/forums/39781/entries/33972">http://help.twitter.com/forums/39781/entries/33972


More information about searching for people is here:
href="http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/14022">http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/14022


We're currently experiencing a couple of issues with finding people; if you can't find yourself in
search, make sure you've posted updates (so we can index you and your updates.) Profiles that haven't posted
updates aren't indexed in search.

Profiles added in the last 8 weeks aren't
being indexed by search.
We're tracking this problem here:
href="http://help.twitter.com/forums/31935/entries/38518">http://help.twitter.com/forums/31935/entries/38518


Due to high volume, support requests reporting this issue are being closed, as we're aware of and
working on the problem, and tracking it in the known issues page. Please check the thread above for updates
or post comments there, and don't re-open tickets. A solved ticket doesn't mean the bug is fixed; bug fixes
will be announced on the known issues page.

When you're using 'Find People' to look for
folks by name or user name, you can only perform 50 searches per hour before you're limited-- this is for
abuse control and spam prevention. If you hit a search limit using Find People, try checking out Twitter
Search's advanced search:

http://search.twitter.com/advanced


If you're not listed in search and your profile is public, we may be investigating your account for
a violation listed here:
http://help.twitter.com/forums/26257/entries/18311


If you're sure that doesn't pertain to you and you still can't find yourself or your friends, reply
to this ticket and let us know.

Thanks!
Twitter Support


and replied:

i post updates, and my profile used to be
indexed. Its also much older than two months. As far as I know, i definitely haven't broken any rules nor
violated Twitter ToS.

to which I have not yet received another reply.


As you can see, this is obviously getting no where, and only helps to highlight what a complete
pain and utter failure Twitter Support is.

You can view the progress of the ticket on the
Twitter Support
Helpdesk.