Dipping My Toes Back In The Twitter Pool

A while ago, I had decided I had enough of Twitter. I had pretty much stopped using it, but did not go so far as to delete my account. I kept it around “just in case” and jumped full-bore into Jaiku.

But then, something happened. Twitter evolved, and I have too. I also noticed that several of my contacts maintained a dual existence on Jaiku and Twitter. I began think about what it might take for me to consider using Twitter again.

The main thing I did: I culled my friend list down to mostly essential contacts–I did this on Jaiku also. Oh sure, people continue to add me as friends on Twitter, but I rarely add them back unless it’s someone I really want to be in contact with.

In short, what I am doing is shutting down the firehose. This along with a reasonable mobile web interface and more stability makes Twitter useful. The experience is relatively consistent across devices, given this setup.

Jaiku is great–if you have a high-end Nokia phone. It’s even better if you are on the private beta. However, if you’re not lucky enough to have one of these devices, the very things that make Jaiku great–threaded conversations and rich presence–quite simply isn’t there. I also have to work at keeping the presence information up-to-date, particularly when I change phones.

In some ways, the simplicity of Twitter is what gives it appeal. Each message is limited to 140 characters. You can tag people with @username. You can send private messages. There’s an API to hook into it. But you know what? The experience is fairly consistent no matter what device you use.

I think there are reasons to use both services, so I am cautiously dipping my toes back in the Twitter pool. What do you think? Have you jumped ship one way or the other and thought about jumping back? Let me know your thoughts.