uber.la

So I'm going about my Twitness. Deleting hangers-on peeps that I'm following, but probably don't have much in common with, a culling of sorts, and I notice this.

Okay, so Meg is Blocking me? Not sure why, but okay. Do you think it's good I can plainly see that Meg is "blocking" me? I mean, couldn't (shouldn't) @megschmeg just not show up in my list rather than hurting my feelings? It's not that I'm taking it personal, but the idea of "blocking" is sort of private. I think. [Meg, whatever I've done to offend, I'm sorry.]

But what happened next just seems to reflect a trend at Twitter HQ. I've noticed that Twitter's CSS styles start getting wonky during the day when they are about to release something new. Last time it was an entire day (CST) of not being able to see my "friends" pages. Apparently @stop and company were readying the pages new updates. But why during the day, during prime time?

So tonight, it is 8:15 pm (CST). I would consider this peak traffic time for the social part of media, after people have gotten home, eaten dinner (I haven't, oops) and are ready to check in with their networks.

Here's what my page looked like a minute ago.

And it wasn't just a transitory problem. I reloaded my browser, my page and someone else's page who I was wanting see what they had been tweeting about.

Well, perhaps I protest too much. Or perhaps the @stop and the QA group and launch teams ought to think about launch times and try something not quite so visible to picky users like me.

It's not easy when working with a team that wants to get something out the door before they leave at the end of day. But release and testing schedules should take into account the heavy use times and not roll stuff just to get a page "live" before EOD (end of day). We all do it. But Twitter is a bit more exposed than most of our clients. Dell maybe. A local retailer, perhaps not.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/twitter-css

Tags: @megschmeg, blocking exposed, CST, dear @stop, dear twitter, design fail, EOD, launching sites, launching under load, page "live", prime time testing, release schedule, stop, twitter blocking, twitter css, twitter qa, twitter testing, twitter ui, twitter user experience, twitter ux, twitter's css styles