Alert Thingy Should Stay In Its Own Lane

  Sarah Perez recently wrote a solid article reviewing the updates of Alert Thingy, an AIR app for Friendfeed. What made the article so interesting for me were her suggestions of what Alert Thingy should integrate in their future releases. The features she requested are being echoed loudly throughout the Friendfeed community, especially amongst those who are giving Alert Thingy a chance to come into its own.

However, a particular line that Sarah wrote really stuck out for me:

They would also have to integrate Twhirl’s other features like shortened URL support and TwitPic, too, to really compete with Twhirl.

Let’s Not Compete

twhirl I never got the feeling that Alert Thingy was trying to compete with Twhirl, one of Twitter’s most popular messaging clients. I understand that the concept behind both are the same: bringing a richer web experience to your desktop. However, I hope that Alert Thingy does not try to compete with Twhirl. Alert Thingy should definitely stay in it’s own lane.

To Switch Or Not To Switch?

For one, I would not switch clients. This would surely amount to information overload for me. I have a hard enough time following my Twitter stream and it would be a complete mess if I had to follow Twitter and Friendfeed all at once.

More May Not Be Better

On the other hand, I think it would be too much to place on the developers of Alert Thingy. By saying this, I am in no way attempting to challenge them. I’m just stating that the demands for having to keep track of two very different web services could result in serious backlogs and high demands by users. I highly doubt they’d kick out updates at the same pace they are now if they were both a Friendfeed and fully functioning Twitter client simultaneously.

A Chaotic Ensemble

I respect that others may find the combination to be a productive feat. However, I just don’t see this being a good thing end the long run. In fact, the one word I would use to describe the combination is "chaotic".

Corvida Raven

A natural pioneer at grasping the rapidly changing landscape of technology, Corvida Raven talks tech in plain English on SheGeeks.net.