Web 2.0 Is Letting Me Down!

Yesterday I did a radio interview that started with a guy telling me people spent too much time in front of their computers and Web 2.0 was bad for society. By the end of the 10 minute interview, I had him mostly convinced he was wrong, by describing how efficient tools like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter could make communications and relationships. Now Facebook and Twitter are repaying me by punching me in the face!!

I still firmly believe in the promise of both companies, and the vision and leadership of their respective founders Evan Williams and Mark Zuckerberg, both of whom are prominent in my book. But Twitter and Facebook have both been largely useless for me this week. Twitter keeps going down and was tanking my blog along with it since I have a Twitter badge on it. Sadly, it's gotten so bad, I needed to take the Twitter badge off. This crushes me, because it was a great way to micro-blog from anywhere and had exposed Twitter to a large number of people in my life who had never heard of it, like my parents, who read my Twitter stream via my blog. That made it an even more efficient tool for reaching loved ones. Oh well, was nice while it lasted! I hope to be able to add it back soon. I am not defecting from the site. I know the Twitter team is working hard, and as I wrote yesterday, I don't want to pile on to all the complaints about downtime.

Facebook is actually frustrating me less, and in the world of Web-utilities that's a bad sign for them. It means, frankly, I've just stopped using it this week. My messaging has become completely disabled and I haven't been able to respond to dozens of people who I don't have email addresses for. It seems when I sent out book party invites to *less* than my entire friends list, I got flagged as a spammer. Only the site didn't tell me that, it just kept saying "Oops! Try again later!" It has been broken for more than a week. I am so frustrated I've stopped going to the site all together, even though wall posts and the news feed and other features still work. I didn't realize how integral messaging was to how I use the site.

I won't pretend to know how hard it is to manage rapidly growing properties such as these, while trying to keep them spam-free. But the problem is when you make yourself a utility, people expect you to just work. It may be unfair, but in some ways, it's the price of success for these sites. So much of the power of Web 2.0 is addiction and this week is like forced detox! No wonder, I've been fighting the urge to get a brownie from the Yahoo coffee bar for three hours-- I'm seeking another vice!!