Limedaring

Dear Twitter, you’re making me sadface. :(

I noticed a some weeks ago that I wouldn’t show up in the Twitter search results when searching for conversations that would include me, and chalked this up to a Twitter “feature” filtering me out. Then, I attended An Event Apart San Francisco, and was quite active on Twitter once I noticed the #aeasf09 hashtag. I wanted to join the conversation of people sharing funny quotes and insights about the conference, and hopefully make a few new friends in the process.

Alas, again I wasn’t showing up when I searched for the hashtag, even if I just tweeted something relevant to the conference. I initially thought, like before, Twitter was filtering me out until I realized I wasn’t signed in (was using Brizzly). And this led me to this post, which indicates I’m not alone.

Somehow, Twitter feels I am not worthy of being searchable and not relevant enough to be added to the general conversation. Did I inadvertently spam? I checked my feed and I couldn’t find anything to indicate this; I have a healthy number of followers, I don’t “stalk” many people, I participate in conversations with friends and strangers, and try to post a mix of personal insights as well as interesting links to things around the web. During the conference, I was having problems with Brizzly posting multiple times due to the poor wifi at the conference, but I deleted the duplicates as soon as I realized (plus, as I mentioned, this has been going on for months).

What do I do? Twitter’s help isn’t actually very helpful (Translation: “Oh, we’ll fix it soon, don’t bother us personally”). I’ve pinged @twitter but kind of expecting the same response. So maybe I’ll make enough fuss and maybe get re-included into the search.

Twitter, I want to be a part of the conversation, but I’m really feeling like a second-class citizen right now.

Edit: I was reminded by a friend that quite a few months ago I switched my username from @vadavia to @limedaring. Did I get penalized for that? Maybe.

Edit x2: I was able to ping @delbius who works at Twitter and responded surprisingly quickly:

@limedaring It may be a bug due to namechange; we’re working on fixing that and it’s a ticketed thing for engineers.

I admit I’m a little suspicious since they might have seen the first edit and said, “Oh, that’s why” without actually checking my account, but hopefully Twitter can fix this ASAP. I changed my name about 6-8mo’s ago through, so I don’t have much confidence in a speedy resolution. :(

New blog post about this development: Don’t change your user name on Twitter.