Twitter Kills IM Support, For Now (PC Magazine)
Chloe Albanesius - PC Magazine Mon Oct 13, 10:01 AM ET
Anxiously awaiting the return of Twitter IM? Don't hold your breath; the micro-blogging site has no plans to restore instant messaging to the site any time soon.
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"We want to bring IM back. We intend to bring IM back. But we've officially moved it from our 'things that are broken' list to 'things that we want to build' list," Twitter co-founder Evan Williams wrote in a Friday blog post. "Based on our analysis, the cost-to-benefit for IM for the most users is not as high as some other things--so it will be a while before we tackle it."
Twitter first launched its IM service in October 2006 with support for XMPP, Jabber, and Google Talk and extended the service to include AIM in December, 2006.
"Since then, our IM feature has been, well ... spotty," Williams acknowledged Friday. "Our infrastructure for IM was never ready for prime time."
The system was built quickly and could not keep up with Twitter's growth, he said.
Twitter killed its AIM support "after struggling for months to make it reliable," Williams wrote. "Our Jabber support has been up and down until about four-and-a-half months ago when it's just been ... down."
News about the return of Twitter IM has since been vague. Reports of it "coming soon" was actually "wishful thinking," Williams admitted.
"It kills me that we haven't been able to deliver on this consistently," he said. "And the bad news is, we don't have a quick fix."
Twitter will now focus on its key offerings "before adding to the load and getting in a precarious situation again," Williams wrote.
"Like any budget (in this case, the budget of our limited engineering time), tough calls need to be made--especially in these times," he concluded.
Originally published on AppScout.