Recently, there was a post in the mac power users forums about how twitter was broken with the following:
So, with the recent changes by Twitter and their impacts, does anyone think there’s a real alternative that power users will embrace? If it’s an opportunity to move to something, then who is creating the option that will take us into the next decade of microblogging?
I made a mistake of replying to a sub posting that had the following and not the main post by a user named dotty.
I don’t have an answer for you, but I will chime in. I live in Colorado and have come to rely on Twitter for fire and evacuation updates. It is by far the fastest way to get emergency updates. I have an “emergency” group that shows push notifications. All other notifications are turned off if they’re not in that group. Now that push notifications are not allowed on either Tweetbot or Twitterrific, is there another alternative?
I admit I was a little too flippant with my response. Two anxious to really think about my response before posting.
I think that this might be a good thing. Although we won’t get push notifications, the applications will still work.
If anything, this might help those who might have become to the constant notifications.
/Devil’s Advocate
This was a missed opportunity and got a response.
@mandaris , I explained I only used Twitter notifications for emergency notifications about fire and evacuations. I don’t understand how this is a “good thing” for me not to receive this information as quickly as possible. Am I misunderstanding your post? I know you signed it “devil’s advocate,” but seriously??? I sincerely doubt Twitter was trying to do us a favor by restricting their API — It sounds like it was a money decision.
I agree that some are much too attached to their phone and notifications going off every few minutes can be distracting, but that really isn’t the point of this post. There are legitimate reasons someone would want timely push notifications. There was an armed escaped convict in my neighborhood recently and the sheriffs dept put out a twitter notification to stay indoors until the person was apprehended… and then another notification giving the “all clear.” How is it a “good thing” not to receive these types of alerts if you choose to? After, I received a call from my neighbor to check in on me because there was a “reverse 911” that went to her land line and she was concerned I wouldn’t know because I don’t have a land line.
The point of my post is to figure out an alternative now that Twitter has made this decision, not to weigh the merits of notifications from Twitter. After a summer from hell with wildfires raging all around me, these notifications were a blessing. If there were no notifications, all was well, but if my home, or the home of loved ones needed evacuated from fire (or now flash flood) it was a “good thing” indeed to be alerted ASAP. It literally saved lives.
All I want to know now is if I can set up something similar or if I can still receive these notifications another way. If I can still get them and they will be delayed 1-2 minutes that is fine. I only want the notification if it is truly from my emergency list on twitter, and I can’t find a setting for this anywhere with Twitter’s own app. Am I missing something?
Very thoughtful, I took the time to write a small response that I hope doesn't erupt into a huge flame war and to appease anyone else who might come across it at a later date.
First, I’m happy that the twitter service has helped you and those you care about. Those are all very good use cases and we can all see why Jack Dorsey would state that twitter would drive to be a daily utility.
But that is the thing, something like that should be a utility that our phones should be able to tap into. For example, I live in California and we have something called an Amber Alert. You get alerts without the need for an account. You can get alerts on your phone, billboards and radio.
As a society, we should be making sure that services such as this are expanded to handle use cases as you have described them.
Now, as far as the question of how to use the twitter app to get you what you want. I don’t know if they have a “vip” notification group on the roadmap. I would hope that they discover it needs to be there since they wrote:
We’re committed to understanding why people hire 3rd party clients over our own apps.
link: Techcrunch
Good discussion.
Probably not my greatest moment on the internet but I'm hoping that I communicated my thoughts well. And just in case, I had sent a private message stating that and Doty responded that
We’re all good.
