Tim Berners-Lee joins Twitter, complains of "confusing" UI

mpk · on Oct 23, 2009

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Notice that the author refers to him as "Sir Berners-Lee". The title goes with the first name so it should be "Sir Timothy".

_csoo · on Oct 23, 2009

That's how you know it's not serious journalism. Wanna pitch in and get the writer a copy of The Economist Style Guide?

petercooper · on Oct 23, 2009

Ooops confusing user interfxce. And no phones on on stage with radiomikes.

He appears to be finding the keyboard a confusing user interface too. :-)

More seriously, he seemed to be using Tweetie to post (then identica, now the Web interface). So perhaps he wasn't really commenting on Twitter's user interface, as the article implies, but Tweetie's (which is great for experienced users but could suffer from the "too simple" effect for others). Despite trying many clients, I've always gone back to the Web one too..

aaronsw · on Oct 23, 2009

This is ridiculous. TimBL has been using identi.ca instead of Twitter for a long time because he supports free network services. No mention of that in the article.

http://identi.ca/timbl

mahmud · on Oct 23, 2009

His name was "reserved" for him by someone:

http://twitter.com/timbernerslee

Easily, the most noble name-squatting I have seen.

But it seems like he went with timberners_lee.

the_real_r2d2 · on Oct 23, 2009

He could have use "the_real_timberneslee".

Nevertheless I do no see why the fuss. Yes, it is the inventor of the WWW but people is seeing this like "the blessing" of Bernes-Lee to the now-omnipower twitter. I think is not, it is just another user that has been catch for the wave.

jackchristopher · on Oct 23, 2009

One problem with that is long names kill @replies.

bmm6o · on Oct 23, 2009

That's a problem with Twitter. Why do they force you to markup metadata within your data?

the_real_r2d2 · on Oct 24, 2009

Yes, you right. Never thought about it

hussong · on Oct 24, 2009

“...the man who came up with the idea for a network of hyperlinked, consistently formatted electronic documents”

Actually, Ted Nelson came up with such an idea decades before TBL.

papachito · on Oct 23, 2009

Actually, he uses decentralized identi.ca which mirrors his dents to twitter, this is the original identi.ca account he actually uses: http://identi.ca/timbl

If you check his tweets, they’re all “from identi.ca” http://twitter.com/timberners_lee/status/5097026255 except for the first ones.