Anyone else hate status announcements via twitter

[eagle 1]

Anyone else hate status announcements via twitter?

I refuse to use it, and even if I didn't it is not allowed at work. I understand Voipo wants to be current and use Facebook and twitter. It is the thing to do these days, but come on...

I can't be the only one who cannot use Twitter or Facebook on work systems. And no, i will not add twitter to my phone....

Should I just not continue using Voipo? The current promotion does sound very good due to price, but lately have been seeing a lot of problems. And the promotion is so low, will the Voipo systems be overloaded like today and thus service will be worse? Maybe I should just add the money from the two accounts to my cellular family plan..ugh

The worst has been the support line is too busy, please enter a support ticket...that is really the worst problem...

They do answer tickets timely, but I do not always have time to go to a computer and enter a ticket...calling via cell should do more than getting a recording telling you all lines are busy...ugh


Sorry for the rant...feel free to delete or whatever

[happygator]

Ditto! You won't find me searching out announcements on Twitter or Facebook. How did you know to go to either today? I didn't see any reference in the promo email they sent out...

[eagle 1]

Ditto! You won't find me searching out announcements on Twitter or Facebook....


How did you know to go to either today? I didn't see any reference in the promo email they sent out...

A friend of mine called me to thank me (rag on me) for getting him to use VOIPO, his phones were not working.....He told me he saw the twitter thing on the forums...

[mikeb]

I think the purpose of using Twitter for service interruption announcements was to provide a communication source that is not affected if Voipo has a catastrophic failure that disables the Voipo web site and the Voipo forum.

I don't own a cell phone and have never used Twitter to send messages, but I do subscribe to the RSS feed from Twitter for Voipo announcements. The Voipo announcements arrive in my Outlook mail just like other emails.

[eagle 1]

"The Voipo announcements arrive in my Outlook mail just like other emails."

Not if Twitter feeds are blocked via mail servers and/or firewalls...Nice thought tho

[timreichhart]

I was talking to a friend and I told him I hate it when voipo uses twitter voipo just needs to make a page just for outages instead of using twitter.

[stevech]

Twitter et al blocked by most corporate firewalls/policy.
BAD idea to rely on it for other than social crud.

[VOIPoTim]

We are looking at the possibility of setting up a secondary status site. The reason most people use Twitter is that it's easy to update, will SMS/e-mail all the followers with updates and provides an organized, fast way to communicate back and forth and share the info.

I do see the point though which is why we're considering setting up something up to go with it. We already have monitoring in other facilities so we could likely put something up there pretty easily.

[MarkTomlinson]

Tim, how about doing a "status" page with an RSS feed. Then we can include it in our favorite RSS readers (I use my Google home page).

For instance, here's what OpenDNS does,
http://system.opendns.com/feed/

[sr98user]

I am using Google reader with Voipo Twitter feed. That's how I get Voipo announcements.

[stevech]

...most people use Twitter is ....

Most? Wrong

[stevech]

dupe - - - snip

[stevech]

Employer's firewalls block twitter, gmail, yahoo, hotmail et al.
Websense polices blacklisted IP addresses/URLs.

It's a different world in corporate land than in startups and private PCs.

[ctaranto]

I personally despise TwitBook sites. But, using Twitter for outages is great.

I reluctantly created a Twitter account (just for voipo), subscribed to voipo, and have it SMS my mobile phone. I get up to the minute updates of service and offers right on my phone, and never had to install an app nor worry about firewalls.

[scott2020]

Most? Wrong

C'mon man. What he said was "The reason most people use Twitter is that it's easy to update..."

He's not saying most people use Twitter. He is saying out of the people who do use Twitter, most chose to use it because it is easy to update, etc.

Twitter is easy to use, fast, and has multiple ways to obtain information from it. It is off VOIPo's network infrastructure, so it can be updated in the event of a major failure. I can't count how many times VOIPo had datacenter issues back in the day, where the phone service was down, forums were down, main web site was down, etc. I haven't seen that happen in awhile thank goodness.

That being said, I can't get to Twitter and other social networking sites from my work computer. I would rather check here or at DSLR. The problem is 90% of VOIPo's subscribers don't know what DSLR is! But I would guess a majority know what Twitter is.

I would think a separate site with the status would help, with RSS feed, but there has to be an easy way the average Joe can use it.

[stevech]

GEEZE. VoIPo runs forums.voipo.com, right? Can't they have a section that's read-only for users to see notices of importance? Most forum software allows one to get emails triggered by a posting topic you subscribe to. This avoids the blocked Twitter issue.

GEEZE.

Not only soc8ial websites, but webmail and file sharing (like pogoplug) are blocked in corporations. It's nasty out there in firewall land.

[holmes4]

There is an advantage to having a source of information not in the same infrastructure as the service. I have seen many issues where network problems take out an entire company, including its forums or news page.

One of my web hosts keeps a page on another unrelated host specifically for "status" messages. But Twitter is an easy to use method that many people already use. (My employer does not block Twitter.)

My gripe is that Voipo is slow to "tweet" about problems acknowledged in the forum, but they are getting better.

[stevech]

I would think that VoIPo, being in the VoIP biz, not the web server hosting biz, would have the Jelsoft forum hosted in a different data center.

[holmes4]

And as it happens, it is. The forums are hosted by hostingservices.net. The IP is owned by Hosting Services in Providence, Utah, but the actual server appears to be in Chicago.

[scott2020]

I believe most of VOIPo uses Softlayer's network, including the www, forums, and back end database stuff. If there is latency in Softlayer's network due to an attack, network failure, etc, it can take down several things. That is why it is important to have an outside status page, but I would rather have a page with RSS like was posted in another thread. There are probably tools out there that would update a "blog" type page, twitter, facebook, and all of that stuff at one time.

[voxabox]

Anyone else hate status announcements via twitter?

I refuse to use it, and even if I didn't it is not allowed at work. I understand Voipo wants to be current and use Facebook and twitter. It is the thing to do these days, but come on...

I can't be the only one who cannot use Twitter or Facebook on work systems. And no, i will not add twitter to my phone....

Should I just not continue using Voipo? The current promotion does sound very good due to price, but lately have been seeing a lot of problems. And the promotion is so low, will the Voipo systems be overloaded like today and thus service will be worse? Maybe I should just add the money from the two accounts to my cellular family plan..ugh

The worst has been the support line is too busy, please enter a support ticket...that is really the worst problem...

They do answer tickets timely, but I do not always have time to go to a computer and enter a ticket...calling via cell should do more than getting a recording telling you all lines are busy...ugh


Sorry for the rant...feel free to delete or whatever
FWIW, I do not hate VOIPo status announcements via twitter;
howerver, due to company policy, I cannot get to twitter - I'm pretty sure that I am not alone