Twitter IM on hold

Evan Williams, Twitter: “To summarize, 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 our Things We Want to Build list. 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.”

I think that Twitter has made a great decision here. The IM integration and all of the talk about other approaches for platform level integration with Twitter have been led by a small but highly vocal group of Web pundits and microblogging advocates. Today, the average Twitter user is satisified with the browser app for mobile and desktop use and with Twhirl for a slightly more advanced experience.

IM integration and a more aggressive feature creep is not what is needed right now and Twitter has done a great job of focusing on improving core features and extending those for new scenarios like their Election 2008 site. Congratulations to Twitter on weathering the stability storm and making good choices about new feature additions going forward.