TweetDeck’s #EpicFail

Yesterday TweetDeck announced that they are forgetting their humble beginnings and screwing over most of their users by dropping support for all mobile apps and dropping support for Facebook.

Instead of reading the rest of this rant if you use the Adobe Air app for TweetDeck or still use TweetDeck on your iPhone or iPad you may want to start looking for a new option.  You only have until May to find something else as the apps will disappear and stop working around that time.

TweetDeck came on the scene and actually made Twitter useful back in 2008 and 2009.  Its integration of Facebook originally allowed users to post the same thing to post social networking sites without having to enter things twice.  Then later editions allowed you to see your responses and feedback on both social networks from a single place.  Today’s announcement sends TweetDeck back to 2009 as it drops Facebook support and limits Twitter interaction strictly to a desktop.

Even the way they announced it was a bit insulting:

“In many ways, doubling down on the TweetDeck web experience and discontinuing our app support is a reflection of where our TweetDeck power-users are going.  Over the past few years, we’ve seen a steady trend towards people using TweetDeck on their computers and Twitter on their mobile devices.  This trend coincides with an increased investment in Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android –– adding photo filters and other editing capabilities, revamping user profiles and enhancing search.  That said, we know this applies to most of our users –– not all of them.  And for those of you who are inconvenienced by this shift, our sincere apologies.”

So they are saying that since they think we use Twitter on our mobile devices and TweetDeck on our computers that we don’t need TweetDeck for our mobile devices.  Well, duh.  The fact that they haven’t updated TweetDeck for any mobile platform in over a year kinda already said that.  Plus this comparing TweetDeck to the Twitter apps isn’t exactly an apples to apples comparison.  Twitter only works with Twitter while TweetDeck works, at least for now, with both Twitter and Facebook.

They also say:

“We’ll also discontinue support for our Facebook integration.”

What?  That’s it?  You are abandoning one of the key features that make you what you are and all you give it is eight words?  The primary reason I use TweetDeck on my desktop is because it can post to both Twitter and Facebook and because TweetDeck posts to Facebook directly as opposed to going through the Facebook API there aren’t any rate limits imposed, like what HootSuite struggled with.  You can read more about that here. 

Because of the limits Facebook imposes on HootSuite, I’ve used TweetDeck on my desktops and laptops and HootSuite on my iDevices.  That has worked well but now it appears I’ve got to go back to HootSuite and then when I get limited go back to posting directly to each social network.  It appears TweetDeck wants to be like Google + and not play nice with anyone.

I can’t say I didn’t see this coming.  In 2011 when Twitter bought TweetDeck, I figured the days of Facebook integration were numbered.  I also can’t say I’m totally surprised they are dropping the mobile apps instead of updating them for Twitter API v1.1.  Twitter has made no secret of the fact that they want to limit API access and close the ecosystem so you have to get access to Twitter only through them.  The fact that they bought TweetDeck at least keeps that platform alive but everyone else is going to be subject to huge rate limits.

In addition, since being acquired by Twitter, TweetDeck has slowly dropped of connections to other social networks like Foursquare, MySpace, and LinkedIn, to name a few.

I predict that in the near feature all the social networks will be islands not connected to each other at all.  Perhaps Google + has it right after all and instead of technology making our lives easier and saving us time we will all be investing more time in updated our social networks separately.  That or one of the big three will die a slow death as folks eventually get bored trying to update them individually.

I recently bought a Microsoft Surface tablet and was excited that I had a tablet that could run TweetDeck.  That excitement has been short lived as I’ m back to looking for an app that works across platforms and isn’t subject to rate limiting from Twitter or Facebook. 

Way to go technology!  Thanks for helping us take one-step forward and two steps back.  Seems before too long we won’t be able to post anything to Twitter unless we are standing on our heads, rubbing our bellies and jumping up and down when we do it.

Fun with Symantec

At a recent Microsoft event I was at I had the chance to speak with the folks from Symantec at their booth. They were giving away little footballs as swag and naturally I needed one of those. Of course in exchange for said football I had to talk with them and let them scan my name tag.

As I was talking to the rep I told them that I was already a customer. He asked me what version we were using and I told him the latest. Then, as if he didn't hear that I was already a customer and already sold on their products, he started to explain to me how great the latest version was and that it was "killing it" out there. He also explained how their technology was superior because they were moving away from definitions and using signatures to detect infected files which was not only more secure but faster.

What the rep didn't know was that I was looking for just such a segue. You see, the week before the event our latest version of Symantec, the one "killing it", let a bug through from a web link in an email. This gave me the perfect opportunity to point out that while their product may be "killing it" they missed a bug that wiped an entire workstation.

The rep then tried to sell me on the idea that I should have submitted the infected files and they would research it and update their signatures because they had the best team in the world for doing that. Again, I'm already sold on them but I had to explain to the rep the role his company plays in our environment. In the ideal world I'd have plenty of time to send samples to them but most times I'm depending on them to "kill it" and be one step ahead. Otherwise my time is spent fixing the bug that got through as opposed to post infection analysis.

I'm still sold on Symantec and I understand that even with our multiple layers of protection things still get through, especially this time of year, I was just enjoying, perhaps too much, pressing the front line guy Symantec happened to send to the same event I was at. I'm sure he'll go on his break if he sees me coming at a future show.

Can Someone Explain the Difference?

As you know if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, I’ve had issues posting to Facebook reliably through every third party app except TweetDeck. While I really like the product of HootSuite, they have a major issue with posting consistently and frequently to Facebook. I’ve been around and around with HootSuite and Facebook and have posted many of those conversations on this blog. I’m happy to report that I appear to finally have answers and workaround for these issues.

The issue, as we thought all long, is Facebook. There are many posts online where you can find that Facebook limits posts from third party apps by both app and person. That means they throttle the app (HootSuite) and the user (me) based on all aggregated activity from both and based on interaction both receive. So, if I’m posting a lot from HootSuite to Facebook and am not getting much interaction in terms of comments and likes then I’m subject to being limited. I have noticed the more interaction I receive the longer I can post before I am cut off.

However, it isn’t just up to me. In their futile effort to prevent spam by punishing everyone else the Facebook algorithm also looks at all content coming from HootSuite so I could be limited quickly even if I haven’t posted in a while because of the activity of other HootSuite users.

This explains the issues with HootSuite and with several other Twitter apps that also post to Facebook that I’ve tried. Tweetings, Tweetcaster, all of them, except TweetDeck. For whatever reason the current web app of TweetDeck, the old Adobe Air version, as well as their existing iPhone and iPad apps don’t have this limit. TweetDeck must connect to Facebook through a different API or they must have an exclusive agreement where Facebook doesn’t throttle their API. I’ve posted to Facebook hundreds of time an hour from TweetDeck without any issues where with HootSuite, I’d have been throttled after 6 posts.

So can anyone explain the difference? Does anyone know why TweetDeck appears to be exempt from Facebook’s policies?

At least we have the answers and for now, we still have TweetDeck so you can post as much as you want to both Twitter and Facebook without fear of being limited. Otherwise, you can always post to Facebook directly from the web or their apps as those obviously have no such limits.

iCloud Exemplifies Technology Short Comings

I’m a firm believer that technology should be designed to make our lives better and easier, not more complicated.  With the release if iCloud last week I’ve been working hard to figure out how it can help improve my personal use of technology but also be used in our enterprise.

Anytime I can use technology to automatically keep all my access point current then I consider it a win.  For example, we have an Exchange server, which allows me to keep my email, contacts, calendar, and tasks updated and automatically synced between all my access devices.  For me that is an iPhone, iPad, laptop, and desktop.

One issue has been bookmarks.  I like to keep my bookmarks synced between my devices so if I need to remote into an appliance on the network I can do that easily without having to remember an IP address.  I used to do this using Live Mesh however that only did my laptop and my desktop.  Live Mesh also failed when we started redirecting profiles for Windows 7 users, which included Favorites.  Live Mesh is not able to sync a redirected folder or any network based folder so it broke and stopped working.

I was hoping iCloud would be the solution to my problem but it isn’t, as iCloud also can’t sync to files on a network, which would include any folders you redirect.

I think this is a major failure of technology companies.  The argument is probably that these features are for home users to keep things in sync and not for those of us who use technology both at home and at work.  How short sighted can you get?  I’m sure I’m not the only person on the planet who thinks using iCloud to keep my bookmarks in sync between multiple devices, including those on an enterprise network they may have redirected folders and network based storage is a good idea.  Why cut your market share in half here when from a purely technology perspective how hard can it be?

My work around to being able to use iCloud at work was to ask our IT guy (me) to exempt my profile from redirecting the Favorites folder.  That allowed iCloud to work and work beautifully – much better even than Live Mesh ever did.  Live Mesh would replicate files but you lost icons and sorts.  iCloud perfectly mirrors what you have including custom sorts and icons.  I was able to exempt my policy through a little GPO magic which would allow me, if I was so included, to provide this same service for others who might want to sync their Favorites between their work machine, home machine, and iDevices.

I also did an extensive internet search to see if anyone else was having this issue and to my knowledge, I’m the first person to post that:

1.  iCloud will not work with redirected folder.  Period.
2.  iCloud syncs better than Live Mesh.
3.  GPO can be used to allow users to work around this limitation while still maintaining a backup of their Favorites using roaming profiles.

Maybe the genius’ at Microsoft or Apple will catch wind of this and figure out a way to open up their sync applications to work both on and off corporate networks thus helping even more people to enjoy their products.  Why make technology harder than it has to be.