Oh, and just so you all know. My main problem with all this twitter stuff, is the person who said it should be used instead of text messages. WTF.
Im pretty certain more people have mobiles than are signed up to use twitter.
Anyway, twitter was originally for people who thought the whole world wanted to know about their lives.
Its only recently changed to be more than that. Anyway, its the last place on earth i would want to look.
You say its easy if your already on your way and using your mobile. Perhaps it is, i dont know. However, if your already on your way, whats the point? Perhaps sometimes there is a point to it (if you decide to hop off at the next station and dont go all the way to where your changing trains or whatever), but very rarely.
I doubt Twitter ever knew was it was for, and has evolved as people worked it out. And, FYI, it was around before the celebs jumped onboard - or the BBC and the like realised they could steal news from it and bypass the usual checking procedures (just saying 'a source on Twitter is reporting...'! There are plenty of bad things about Twitter, Facebook etc but that doesn't mean you disregard them as some scary form of new technology that we must all ignore.
I never said Twitter should replace the websites or text (and if I did, it was a typo) because that would be ridiculous!! I've been subscribed to text alerts from the day FCC introduced it - but in recent months, I now get the texts
incredibly late nearly all the time (so I am putting the blame on FCC, not my network, as other texts arrive immediately). I can be told my 'watched' train is cancelled an hour after it was cancelled, and I've even had 'the train is now reinstated' messages later in the day, long after it has been and gone.
In other words, the FCC system is totally broken and therefore useless. That has been the case for months, and isn't down to exceptional conditions in recent days. We all know the new CIS system is not fit for purpose in its current state - so it was hardly surprising that it has failed so miserably when put to the ultimate test. And when you switch timetables, you need to remove the old services to stop this duplication and confusion. Many trains aren't stuck or delayed; they've been replaced with another service entirely. That information is KNOWN and can therefore be conveyed to people.
Also, do you think that many people are signed up to the text alert service - which costs FCC money to send? I doubt it, as it's not widely advertised. Twitter is free and they have been advertising it.
Too much info is posted way too late, as if FCC is simply providing a diary for reference to those who are interested. If they haven't got a clue and there's no info out there to give, they may as well say 'Don't travel' and give up.
I used to have the same view as you on Twitter, but you can't be so dismissive - and suggesting that a driver would Tweet updates is crazy (and, sorry, but I don't think you were joking as you then said 'Its because some of you seemed so worried about them not using twitter', and I couldn't care less if they use Twitter or not, although hopefully not when driving a train, and are we likely to start following loads of individual Twitter accounts for drivers?!). I hope to God that more than just a driver knows when a service has been terminated.
Like it or not, social media is becoming incredibly important for businesses now. In fact, I hope that this is what Twitter will eventually be most useful for, not reading what celebrities (or their agents) are supposedly doing, when you can obviously say (and make up) anything you like.
The FCC information has been appalling, just as it has been many times before. Naturally, they'll say they will investigate if anything went wrong with a view to fixing it for next time, but I no longer believe they will. Let's remember that THEY proudly advertised how they were embracing Twitter.. I am sure the posters are still up at stations throughout their network.
And, finally, you can/could use their Twitter service to get personal messages sent via direct messaging on any particular service - duplicating the SMS service but with the advantage that you can pick up the message on any device (or multiple) devices as it effectively comes through as an email, a Tweet and even an SMS (sent via Twitter) if you set it up. It's far more flexible.
