#twitter @new =sux :(

The threat from Twitter.com to forcibly transfer all twits across to the "new Twitter" has loomed for many months now and has been ignored. Ignored because the 'old Twitter' is fine as it is. It is a marvellously simple combination of the ticker-tape of old and the SMS text of this century. The simplicity of operation and of the visual display for the user are the format's strongest points and together with the absence of intrusive forms of advertising have ensured the system has had extraordinary uptake across the world. So why change what ain't broke?

TUMEKE_blog on Twitter in the 'old' format: nicely apportioned with all the messages one after the other and a slim sidebar with just a few bits incl. the trending feature. It looks good and is all that is needed:

NEWS_UPDATES on Twitter in the 'new' format: shite. Huge gaps between messages so you have to keep scrolling down all the time and a big fat wide empty pointless sidebar with nothing in it. Looks awful compared to the old one:And when this new one actually starts working instead of apologising and saying try again in a minute I'll be able to tell if its new functions are any good, but at the moment it won't work in any browser (while the 'old' one has no such problem) so it's off to a terrible start.

Replacing something that works with something that's broken is not a way to retain users. If this continues Twitter runs the risk of creating a viable space for a competitor who will base their system on recreating what the 'old Twitter' was. Then again to those not tweeting direct from the web and who are using one of the multitude of various interfaces to send (and receive) messages across platforms they will probably think this complaint is a trifling one easily overcome by changing to one of these programmes. However for most people the Twitter.com interface is the only one they will use and if they can't get that right they are in trouble.