We all know I’m a twitter addict (as are many of you), so it shouldn’t be surprising that I follow the twitter status blog fairly religiously.
Today, Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter, wrote on the blog today that IM support, which has been gone for months now, won’t be back any time soon. That’s going to disappoint plenty of people, but it’s not such a bad thing. First of all, it’s been gone for months already, second of all, what good is IM support if the system itself is shaky? Twitter went through some really rough growth spurts earlier this year, with many people threatening to leave for good because of spotty connection and the seemingly omnipresent fail whale. They’ve gotten better. Not perfect, but much much better. It would really be a shame to lose that for IM support.
But more importantly, Williams’ entry makes Twitter more transparent. Web 2.0 and social media are supposed to be about transparency and connecting with users, after all, and saying you’re going to do something you have no intention of actually doing is a great way to alienate your user base.
It’s dangerous to not give your users what they want, but it’s much more dangerous to lie to them.