Comments on: Free Services are Not Free

By: Devan

Devan — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 07:02:26 +0000

Dave, thanks for the pingback! I must say I am very very disappointed at Twitter’s silence on this whole matter. Their blog welcomes Rael to the team, but they don’t even have the temerity to mention ‘I want Sandy’ by name even.

Just shows what little value they place on the service and the brand. Massive ‘fail’ on their part!

Cheers,
Devan

By: dave

dave — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:33:26 +0000

Eyebee and Ian, thanks for the comments. This whole fiasco puts into sharp relief the idea of trust and stewardship in Web 2.0. I think Twitter has demonstrated a history of being poor stewards unworthy of trust, so I’m not using my time on their products anymore. I agree with Ian, even if they revived Sandy or something like it, who would trust it now?

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:13:17 +0000

Great post, and the one about hating Twitter was an excellent post as well.

I used the I Want Sandy service constantly. It was my virtual assistant and was deeply integrated into my daily workflow. I had no plans of moving from the service any time soon, but when I was presented with a fortnight notice that they were closing… well… that’s just lousy.

I don’t know if the plan was to sell out all along or not, but Sandy was a service I would have gladly paid for in its current incarnation. Perhaps Twitter will revive, but I doubt it will be in the same form. Pity, too.

In any case, I’ve already begun migrating my workflow to other services (mostly Google ones) that I know, as you said, won’t go away. If Twitter does revive the Sandy service or something similar, I won’t be moving to it because there’s no guarantee of service or features.

By: Eyebee

Eyebee — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 06:32:31 +0000

I didn’t use ‘Sandy’ so it’s no loss to me but that’s not the issue here. The issue here is that you did use it, you did integrate it into your life, and you now feel the loss, and the damned inconvenience of not having it, and also of having to learn and adapt to something else. Of course you’re angry, and rightly so.