Tim Walker › Likes

I agree with most of the reasons - but, sometimes I like when people make it short and to the point. if they had the ability to write more than 140 characters, they probably would have sent loooong, bothersome email instead. - Orli Yakuel

Actually, there is this great solution to the problem. I think it is called "e-mail". It is really fascinating stuff. I am not sure why people insist on DMs. - Rob Diana

Rob: most people are lazy and aren't willing to look for an email link if one isn't provided. - Robert Scoble

@Rob - posting your email address as-is on the internet is just inviting a ton of spam. It's hard enough dealing with my daily influx of mail as it is. - Lindsay

Lindsay: my email has been on my blog for eight years and I don't get that much spam. That's what Gmail is good at: blocking it. - Robert Scoble

I had commented on the blog directly, but why is it so hard for Twitter/FriendFeed/etc to provide an email user link? That seems like a simple solution to the problem. - Rob Diana

the way I see it, Twitter's DM isn't a replacement of email, altough Facebook's messaging might. - gabo

Maybe an option to accept or not DMs (account-wide) will do the work for all who like them or not imho :) - George Tziralis

I'm working on an extended profile on http://twitwall.com as a way to try to steer people towards communicating with me more efficiently. I'm always trying to figure out a way to do things the most productive way possible. - Jannifer @wordsforliving

I think we found this weekend's bitchmeme! - Rob Diana

If Twitter added RSS to the direct messages page, you would be able to read them on your Google Reader and add tags over there the same way you do on gMail in order to priotize. Responding would require you to click to the Twitter page and respond, even with a longer text because you installed the Twitzer firefox plugin first that enables you to have longer twitter messages on Twitter.... more... - Bart Muskala - AdNerd Sr. from twhirl

If people were trying to use DMs as email to reach me... yeah I'd hate them too! I think all of your points are very valid ones. But as the feature is called 'direct message', which could also be 'instant message', it's for something quick that requires a response that is as equally short and sweet. I don't hate the feature. But in your shoes, I would hate how people are using it. - Wendy Peters from twhirl

DM's were not intended to replace email but its usage is currently very similar to it. - Jay

wow! when you put it like that, 'why DM sucks' makes sense. i have less that 100 DMs on TT so i've never had to consider the issue of scaling up to deal with 1000s of messages. - .LAG liked that

dm's for me are a hitelisted SMS that doesn't leak my phone number. Extremely useful. Scoble following the entire universe spoils the whitelist. Twitter dropping SMS support for DMs outside the US made this less useful, as getting DMs on my UK phone was very handy - Kevin Marks from twhirl

My wife and I often use Twitter DM's when she's at work. She doesn't always hear text messages to her cellphone, and she runs Tweetdeck on her desktop there in any case. More to the point, as Twitter is seamless between desktop and cellphone, it doesn't matter if she's in or out of the office. She also points out that she prefers Twitter when she's in the office to SMS, as it's easier to type on her PC keyboard. - Ian May

The solution seems simple to me... Twitter DM, Facebook Messages, LinkedIn messages, etc should be sent to my email.. I should be able to reply to the message from email and have the service treat it as a DM / Message. This way I can still treat it as I do my email while the sender can protect their email address. - Bastard Operator From FF

What I don't get is why people respond to my public tweets with DMs, thus forcing a conversation that I WANTED public into being private. And 99% of the time this happens to me, it's not anything that needs to be private. I'd just respond back with an @ reply, but the public conversation is already broken. - Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF

Sean, that is what I have been trying to say. I do not understand why it is such a problem. - Rob Diana

Rob: the problem is one of revenue, I'm sure. If facebook (for example) sent messages to my email and let me reply there, I wouldn't log into facebook, see their ads, etc. It's a standard Walled Garden problem driving traffic is more important then the service - Bastard Operator From FF

Sean: I understand that, but if Facebook, etc. made the ability to respond via email something you had to opt-into (not the ability to be responded to in this way, mind, since the email will be transformed back into whatever service it originated from) with the understanding that the email notifications would have their ads in them I'd be fine with that. - Jason Penney

I don't understand: Twitter DM, Facebook Messages, LinkedIn Messages, all end up in my email Inbox. That doesn't happen with you? - Glen Mistletoe

Glen: the issue is that you either can't read the whole message or you can't reply to them via email. Twitter would be the one I'd see difficulty responding to via email due to the 140 character limit. As a user of Basecamp, I've seen what happens with reply-by-email: 90% of the time, the signature gets added to the reply because reply-by-email parsers are pretty bad. - Mark Trapp

And there are limited options as to what goes to your inbox. - Chris Baskind

Thought Bart Muskala made a good point. I guess many people here more or less live in their GReader. If twitter included RSS on DMs then with the better GReader lifehacker scripts you could easily view DM page without leaving GReader, as well as tag and sort and search them. - Peter Efland

Wayne and Jannifer are on the right track. Has anyone come up with a process for managing what they do online yet? I'd love to read it. I would be in favor of an independent place where we could set our preferences for where replies and contacts are sent. By independent I mean Open Source with the data protected from Corporate or Government access other than to feed date IN and get limited data OUT. It would take someone with far more developed skills at privacy and security to know what would be required. - Internet Strategist

There is so much room for improvement in the way Twitter works. I look forward to seeing Jennifer's work in action and I believe that Internet Strategist and Wayne are putting up great thoughts and ideas. - Robert Miller

I prefer DMs to @s any day. I hate making my Twitter feed noisy for a response that is only intended for one person. - Tamar Weinberg

Here ya go Robert -- http://scobleizer.com/2008... - Jay Cuthrell