For the whole time I’ve used Twitter, I’ve had my account set to public, and had open conversations with other people. I’ve also had private conversations via Direct Message (DM), with close friends.

While we privately chat about all manner of things, sometimes this is used to send URLs between each other that we don’t want the rest of the world to see. We might be chatting a job offer I don’t want to advertise publicly, a website that is especially good or bad, but is only of interest to one person, or something that some might deem offensive that I know one good friend will find amusing. We might be discussing a radio feature we’re thinking about, or some part of an upcoming podcast. And this is where Twitter now sucks. We used to be able to chat away, share web links aplenty. And then Twitter made some changes, and it just doesn’t work anymore.

I’ll go “hey did you see this in the news yesterday?” and dare to try and include a link to a website like which twitter then blocks. And what does it block? Loads of stuff. And it doesn’t block it intelligently like Google Chrome does. It blocks it like a moron. Like the worst kind of Internet filter, randomly deciding that the Huffington Post (US) site is fine, while the Huffington Post (UK) site is too evil to be allowed. The Mirror is ok, the Metro is ok, the Daily Mail is ok, a website of my own that makes podcasts – parkandgardner.com – no? Why not?) Continue reading Why Twitter DM sucks right now →