Dear Twitter…..What the heck is going on?

Yesterday I received well over a half dozen e-mails from Twitter with the following information:

Due to concern that your account may have been compromised in a phishing attack that took place off-Twitter, your password was reset. Please create a new password by opening this link in your browser:

This will reset your password. Remember to choose a strong password that is a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols. Do not reuse your old password.

As a reminder, you should be extraordinarily suspicious of any third party that offers to artificially inflate your follower count. We do not endorse any of these sites.

Please make sure to:

Scan your computers for viruses / malware, especially if unauthorized tweets continue to be posted in your accounts even after you’ve changed the password.
Check the Connections page at http://twitter.com/account/connections and revoke the access privileges of any third party applications that you do not recognize.
Avoid providing your username and/or e-mail and password to untrusted third-party sites.
Remove any updates that you did not post personally; leaving these updates can result in your account being re-suspended.
You can also visit our help page for hacked or compromised accounts

Last night after getting a bunch of messages from Twitter I went to my account and reset my password.  Immediately after resetting my password I got another e-mail from Twitter with the same message above.  Several more messages were sent quickly afterward.

What the heck Twitter?

This has happened once before.  Has my account been compromised?  Couldn’t tell you.  Did someone get my password?  Don’t know again.  Do I feel super secure about using Twitter?  Right now, not really.

Honestly, I just don’t get Twitter

I’ve been using Twitter for several months now.  As a matter of fact, I set it up to work with my blog so when I update here, it posts there.  Very cool.  That’s about as far as I go with Twitter.

Initially I joined up with Twitter to follow a few favorite photographers.  As I tried to follow those folks I realized something.  The messages are almost incomprehensible to me.  Messages like the following one take some deciphering:

ChrisKlapheke Video review of AquaTech SportShields and SoftCaps by @jpons now up on the @OPGear blog http://bit.ly/32vVcR

So, the person posting is Chris.  They’re referring to jpons (another user) and OPGear blog (another user) and finally the link to whatever story this is.  Thing is, I see messages from people with 10 @ references afterward.  I guess those types of messages are including a bunch of other users, and you’ve got to go to each of their threads to follow whatever the conversation is.  But I just can’t wrap my head around some of the more cryptic messages floating around on Twitter.

Now, I get some social media.  Blogging?  Yup, all over it.  Facebook, yup got that down too.  But for all of the hype about Twitter I just can’t follow it.  I know, instant messaging, short messages under 140 characters.  Pretty hard to say much of anything in 140 characters, but I’m in the minority on that front.  So many people are using the service and sending messages.

Initially when I signed up I allowed updates to my mobile device.  I stopped that the first day.  Messages every other minute, and I couldn’t even figure out what the posters were saying.  Now with the list of followers and those I follow, something is updated by someone every 30 seconds.  I don’t have time to sit and read cryptic updates every 30 seconds.  Nobody does.

So, how does someone get something out of the Twitter experience?  Is there a book, website, tutorial, “Reading Twitter Messages for Dummies?”  If so, I need a copy.  I also need to figure out why somebody was trying to hack my Twitter account yesterday, and why when I reset my password per Twitter’s request they sent me a bunch of new e-mails saying a hack happened and they didn’t take my new password.

In the end…….I’m nearing the conclusion with my own personal Twitter experience.  Doesn’t seem worth the effort!