New Twitter Dashboard: The Good, The Bad, and the Very Very Bad

When I open my laptop, Outlook and Chrome auto-open. Yes, I'm a lazy SOB. I automate everything. Even my coffee prepares itself. 

Then, there it was! Something new on Twitter!

Twitter announced something called "Dashboard." YAY!

Or was it?

The announcement promised to help those with multiple accounts. Great news! TweetDeck IS a little clunky.

My eye burst open. The left eye soon followed. The brain-cobwebs cleared instantly, or as instantly as they ever do.

I quickly signed up.

I was ready to be thrilled. I was getting my happy-dance ready.

Meh.

For light Twitter users this is a good thing. For business and power users it's just "Meh," in many ways, and effing disastrous in others.

Twitter put access to their super analytics in an easier to find place. They also put their Tweet-Scheduler front and center. Both were buried in the Twitter ads section. 

That sounds great, but they didn't include any bulk scheduling. You have to schedule them one at a time. That feature has been around since I started there 8 months ago. It's nothing new, and fairly useless.

One thing I do like is that you can see the real numbers for followers and following. At a certain point, the normal Twitter page just shows approximations. That bugs me. (hint, hint, Javier and Fede)

Here's something I really HATE

Maybe it's just temporary. Maybe not. All the hullabaloo about the new 600X600 image size has been chucked out. 

Images on Dashboard show at 600X300 like the old Twitter. 

Worse, they don't scale, they crop! We use images to attract attention to our tweets. Now they just look stupid on Dashboard.

Here's an example:

This is what it looks like on regular Twitter.

Talk about a giant step backwards. And, this isn't even the "Very Very Bad" part.

I'll hold off making changes until I know if this is just a glitch, or is it permanent. Given most social platforms' propensity for screwing with users, I think permanent is more likely.

Something else I really, really  HATE

Apparently, when you sign up you tell Twitter what you want to see. 

Scoop, I want to see everything. That's why I follow so many people. 

Dashboard cuts a feed worse than LinkedIn's algorithm ever did, or even can! 

I've dropped from about 3000 tweets an hour to <35. 

Really? 

Are those other 2965 tweets just spam?

Really?

Here's my regular Twitter feed after being away 90 minutes. 

Here's my Dashboard feed for the same timeframe.

Back to the drawing board, guys. Dashboard sucks.