Twitter Suggestion

An instant messenger which can connect to AIM, GTalk, Jabber, ICQ, and more.
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docwhat
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Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Jul 31, 2009 5:12 pm

Twitter Suggestion

Post by docwhat »

Hi!

I think that the twitter support is pretty nice and cool. ;-) I love that Adium is supporting more.

Since I've added twitter to a bunch of my buddies I've noticed that the fact that twitter is never offline makes the user statuses less useful.

Example:
* joe has a twitter and aim account.
* joe logs off aim.
* However, he is still in my "online" part of the buddy list and is shown green (online).
* If I double click, then a window opens up, but it is set to send a tweet.

My suggestions:
* Status should be calculated by ignoring twitter. If the status is offline and only twitter is available, then set the status to "Twitter Only"
* The icon for "Twitter Only" should be a twitter icon.
* The buddy list should only show "Twitter Only" users in a separate section, similar to the "offline" section.
* The chat window shouldn't default to twitter for chatting unless the user only has twitter (no aim, etc.)

I suppose this should be designed so that other non-instant messaging protocols should be able to use the "Twitter Only" status too.

Altogether, twitter isn't really instant messaging; it has some big differences:
* Messages aren't cheap. They cause an update to a public profile available to everyone.
* Messages aren't transitory. They last for a long time.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

Thanks again for the great work!

Ciao!
dmbarlow
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Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Jun 25, 2009 2:04 pm

Re: Twitter Suggestion

Post by dmbarlow »

I really like the addition of Twitter to Adium. However, it could use some suggestions, like docwhat has said.

Status is definitely an issue, as the Twitter accounts being "always available" does mess with the usefullness of the status for metacontacts (one of my favorite features of Adium). To either ignore Twitter as far as status goes, or, preferably have a "Twitter Only" status would help that issue immensely.

Another issue is amount of posts. If I'm off for a day, Twitter becomes ( and has become ) unusable. If you log into Twitter with too many tweets since the last login of that account, Adium hangs until your force quit it, or at least that is what happens for me.

A solution or workaround would be especially appreciated. Perhaps a workaround where in the prefs/settings for your Twitter account, you can set it to only pull the last 10, 20, 30, messages? Or something similar, while a better solution is looked for? This is definitely unusual -- Syrinx (my fallback Twitter client) seems to work fine, has not had this issue.

And... that's it. :)
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