shawn farner [dot com]

Since Twitter has once again bitten the dust, a lot of discussion has taken place on FriendFeed as to whether or not Twitter is running out of chances. Some believe that FriendFeed will ultimately replace Twitter. Personally, I feel that the two services have two very different aims. I don’t think I could leave Twitter solely for FriendFeed.

So what would I leave Twitter for, then?

• A well-planned service run by people who truly believe they have something special on their hands. These people would build their service fully anticipating that it will be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Downtime would be extremely minimal.
• Direct messaging between users, which FriendFeed lacks.
• The ability to update via SMS or IM and to receive updates via those as well.  And please, if you are going to support IM, support AIM.  It’s one of the largest services out there, if not the largest.
• Friend lists and the ability to send direct messages to just those people.
• The ability to easily import friends from other social networking sites.
• The ability to add friends to SMS who are not members of the service (that person would have to verify that they do, in fact, want SMS messages from you).

That’s all, really!  I like that Twitter is such a simple service.  It has its niche and it serves its purpose.  Unfortunately, it seems that they are down more than they are up lately.  If a service came along and did all of the things above, I’d join in a heartbeat.

Does the above service exist already?  Let me know about it and I’ll pimp myself out, mentioning it every chance I get.