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We made Qwitter for fun because we know lots of people would want to use it. We say it would be cool to be affiliated with Twitter simply because they're cool guys. We started the app the week after we met with the Twitter founders and developers for beers and said on the way home "let's make a Twitter app".
And that's all there is to it.
Oh, and on a technical note, if Twitter wanted to stop us, all they'd have to do is block our IP. They could do it literally in seconds. They wouldn't even have to contact us, never mind buy us out!
intended for people to draw the logical conclusion that you hoped
Qwitter would be integrated into Twitter, your footer seemed to speak
otherwise, so I have to side with Leslie in her comments, rather than
seeing it as "really, really unfair and totally unfounded".
Of course, they may just implement this feature on their own, and that
would eliminate the need for a separate service.
Are you planning on doing anything with Qwitter despite what's already
been announced? Would you ever point this functionality at other
social networks?
And yes, the guys at Twitter are very cool people who seem to do all things related to their application with care. Look how long it took them to decide on what they considered an appropriate spambot policy to fit Twitter's MO. I'm interested to see how, or if, they do anything about Qwitter and Twitterless and the potential for negative impact on Twitter users.
I was recently unfollowed by someone who I was shocked when he followed me in the first place. When I met him in Vegas, he commented to me "Honestly, is your twitter-stream really interesting enough to follow?" And you know what, when he unfollowed me, I took it in stride. I did not complain or ask why, because I knew why.
On the flip side, I just (about 25 seconds ago) unfollowed someone, who I am praying *does not use* qwitter. His tweets were never useful, they have been teetering on the "spam-like" and the one time that I actually @ed him, I received carbon copy responses from multiple accounts. It honestly scared me to follow him. Do I want him to realize that I am no longer following him, and perhaps just start spamming my replies stream? Not exactly.
Does this stop me from signing up for Qwitter? No. I am as interested in knowing what ticks people off as the next guy.
I realize the double standard.
And I don't have an answer for it. (I trust myself.)
But in a public social space, we have to remember that friendships (or mutual followings) are somewhat symbiotic, and the second that that relation stops being "worth it" for one party, it is his/her prerogative to stop it.
While I am not sure if this is a monetizable path, but I think that Qwitter would be more useful as an anonymous service. Meaning that @LouisGray can learn that he lost 9 people after a certain bunch of tweets, or, providing more analytics, that 4 people who rate between 90 and 100 on Twitter Grader stopped following him, and 5 people who rate between 40-50 stopped him as well.
That's just my POV. That would be helpful, not impinge on the fluidity of the service, and act as a barometer for each tweeter to be able either temper their posts, or say "This is me, I will not change anything."
way" to use it. This can go for how often they post, their subject
matter, who they choose to follow, what tool, etc. Twitter, in my
opinion, is becoming ubiquitous in the way e-mail did years ago. We
may not all agree on the e-mail client, or how often to write, or what
length, or how frequently to check, but we're all using it.
If people choose to follow me, or unfollow me, based on my activity,
it's at their discretion.
Everyone uses Twitter differently as Louis mentioned, so if people don't like Qwitter, they won't use it. If the community at large doesn't like it, it won't get traction. But if someone finds it useful, so what? Let them use it.
And if one is so fearful about offending someone, then anon block them and you won't see their tweets. Until an app comes along that reports that as well :)
unfollowed me. I wonder which one it is. Maybe if I used Twitter more
for conversation and less as an echo of my RSS feed, I'd see some
defections.
Am a new kid on twitter and still learning the rules and tricks of the game!
"Up until now, the best feature of Twitter has been a level of anonymity for blocking people and unfollowing them."
Everyone's profile shows how many people are following them, and who they are in order of most recent. If you see your followers # increase, click through to see who the new person is and perhaps follow them in turn... only to see that number drop back down again a few hours later - if you click through and notice your new person is gone again... that's hardly anonymous.