Twitter’s been busy this week. Really, really busy.

First, they’ve rolled out that Retweet Beta to what has to be almost everyone. I’m not really a fan of it – I miss the personal WHY behind the retweet that I don’t get anymore, and I think it’s hard to see who the retweet is from at first glance. I’m glad my third-party apps are still using the old Retweet. I don’t really think I’m alone in my reception to the Retweet option.

Next, they’ve gone French. Twitter is now translated into both Spanish and French, just in time for the big Le Web event. Speak French? Twitter wrote the announcement en français.

Twitter also now knows where you are. Or rather, it could. Twitter has rolled out the API for geolocation. What this means is that third-party apps like Seesmic and FourSquare can start integrating the location of your tweets. I’m pretty sure that some mobile apps already do this, such as Twidroid, if you turn on the option. I think it’s just better integrated now. This is only in the API though, and hasn’t yet been implemented on Twitter.com. At the recent Social Media World Forum I attended, location-based anything was definitely one of the top topics. Twitter has also updated their privacy policy to reflect geolocation.

They’re not done yet. In what I think is the smartest thing they could have done, they changed the question. Back in April, I begged them to change the question. While we occasionally answer “What are you doing?” it led to terrible discussions with people who didn’t “get” Twitter. After all, What are You Doing? can lead to stupid discussions. I’ve always thought people were more communicating what they were learning, but “What are You Learning?” isn’t really a cool question. Twitter has updated the question to “What’s happening?”

Sure, someone in San Francisco may be answering “What are you doing?” with “Enjoying an excellent cup of coffee,” at this very moment. However, a birds-eye view of Twitter reveals that it’s not exclusively about these personal musings. Between those cups of coffee, people are witnessing accidents, organizing events, sharing links, breaking news, reporting stuff their dad says, and so much more.

The fundamentally open model of Twitter created a new kind of information network and it has long outgrown the concept of personal status updates. Twitter helps you share and discover what’s happening now among all the things, people, and events you care about. “What are you doing?” isn’t the right question anymore—starting today, we’ve shortened it by two characters. Twitter now asks, “What’s happening?”

So the folks at Twitter have been swamped. In the midst of all that, @lukester at Twitter was forwarded my Locked Out issue by a friend and in 10 minutes had me up and running again. I don’t know what took four days (other than, you know, they’re swamped), but I’m ever grateful to the awesome @lukester who gave me back access to Twitter and Twitter via mobile 3rd party devices, which is really important to how I communicate. Thanks Twitter!

__

Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

In case anyone is curious, Twitter does have tech support. I had no idea – until I got locked out of Twitter.

It’s been an exercise in patience for me. I’m the type of person who needs things fixed immediately; I have a hard time not doing anything right-this-minute. It’s just how I function. Needless to say, it’s a good thing that I rarely need any sort of tech support. IT does not always function in right-this-minute. Add in the fact that the poor folks at Twitter have been dealing with the Retweet roll-out and the UI upgrade, well … it’s been three days and I’m still locked out of Twitter. I know they’re swamped, so I feel really bad every time I bother them. At the same time, I’m locked out of Twitter for no reason.

I suppose it’s my fault to begin with. I have a personal account where I chat about non-tech, non-work stuff with my friends. I keep it locked/private because I really don’t want that stuff to be google-able. (Why didn’t that word make it into the dictionary?) I’m trying to increase my security on my various web identities, considering how often my machine sits unattended at coffee shops, so I went in to change my password in the settings on Twitter.com. All was well.

Then I tried to log in from Seesmic and that’s where the trouble began. Seesmic didn’t recognize the new password. I tried it on Tweetie 2 from the iPhone and Twidroid from the Droid – same problem. “Could not authenticate.” I went back to Twitter.com. It suddenly didn’t recognize my new password either. Nor did it recognize my old password. It told me to “chillax and try again later.” Thanks Twitter! A minute ago you said “Congratulations! You changed your password!” I think I smell a bug.

I clicked the Forgot Password link, entered my information, and reset my password again. From that page, after resetting my password, I can get into my account. But that’s it. Yep, I can get in through what is actually a security hole. I bet if I entered the email address and phone number of any of my friends, I could get into their Twitter accounts. A little access here and there, and you can easily get in … you just need one password to an email account. The people at Twitter, of all people, should know how easy that is.

I have been through the circle of resetting my password using Forgot Password so many times since Sunday that I’ve lost count. I finally managed to find an actual place on Twitter to submit a support ticket. It wasn’t easy. But it worked. I think I may have actually corresponded occasionally with a real person, about a real support ticket, and I wasn’t even forced to use Get Satisfaction. Did it help? Not really.

I’ve explained the situation several times. They keep giving me the standard “Just click Forgot Password and reset your password, all will be fine,” line. You can always tell when tech support is cutting and pasting from some reply manual. That was irritating considering that, had they read my ticket, they’d know I used the Forgot Password link about a hundred times. I’d also tried several different browsers and cleared my cache multiple times.

Finally, today, I lost patience completely. I suggested that maybe they should just reset my password on their end. Much to my surprise, they said “Sure! Here’s your new password!” And after giving me that, they reminded me I can always use the Forget Password link. (Because I don’t know where that link is at all …)

Guess what? I’m still locked out of Twitter. Three days, one ticket that support keeps closing and I keep re-opening, and many passwords later, I still can’t get in. Their password did not work.

Well, I can get in to Twitter. By going through a minor security flaw … Ironically, the whole reason all of this started was that I was trying to be more secure.

__

Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

by Michelle Lentz

There are really two questions here: Will Oprah make tweeting so amazingly uncool that our parents will be doing it? And, can Twitter handle an Oprah effect?

Yesterday, Oprah announced on her Facebook page that she’ll be sending her “very first tweet” today when she hosts Ashton Kutcher, who won his recent (and silly) race against CNN to have 1 million followers.

Ashton, who does love Twitter, will no doubt evangelize the product. But I am still cringing just a little.

A few weeks ago, Ellen deGeneres issued a challenge to her watchers to help her get to some crazy number of followers. And I got a phone call.

Apparently if you Google “Twitter write tech support” you get one of my tweets, from my blog. So a woman in Evansville, Indiana, was able to follow a trail from my blog to my contact information on my business web site and call me.  And because I felt sorry for her, I spent the next hour trying to walk her through how to set up a Twitter account. It was the equivalent of a “CD-ROM drive is not a cupholder” conversation.  Since I wasn’t exactly billing out at my normal rate, I cut the call off as best I could after an hour.

My point is that this is a non-technical woman who wanted to join Twitter just to help out her favorite daytime talk show host. What’s going to happen when Oprah gets people to sign up? I’d love to hear the stats about the number of people who sign up today -v- the number of abandoned Twitter accounts in one month. Since Twitter uses Get Satisfaction, I can’t exactly say that Twitter Tech Support is user-friendly for someone like my dad – or my caller from Evansville.

That said, the Ellen/Oprah effect is cool in a way. I often preach that Twitter flattens the org chart. This is people trying to connect with celebrity.

But here’s the next question. Oprah can have an amazing effect on things. If she’s twittering, and if large number of users are driven to the site to follow her, then can Twitter handle it? Or will we be seeing the fail whale today?

__

Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Sites: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net