Thanks,
~ Ross

What about the house you built?

For all the talent currently at Twitter, it seems that improvements and enhancements are VERY slow to arrive. Facebook (despite the fact I don’t use it anymore, because I greatly prefer the brevity of Twitter) at least isn’t afraid to introduce fixes at more frequent intervals. Since Twitter is ostensibly a simpler app, I’d think that agile deployments would be less of a problem for you guys.

I also continue to believe that Twitter “feels slow.” Each time I see a Twitter link to someone’s profile or particular tweet, I brace myself for a laborious loading process. I applaud the move away from front-end AJAX loading, but more certainly needs to be done to improve the speed. (Google’s search pages should be the target for page load times–they set the gold standard. The same can’t really be said for Gmail or Maps though.) Granted, I use Tweetbot for my normal Twitter activity, but of course still encounter Twitter links across the web.

Anyway, thanks for the great update. Hope all goes well.

Coffee
The local big boy in town makes coffee that tastes like a burned mess. It is not my taste. I have noticed the locals seem to order drinks that have coffee in them, but seem to be anything but sugar delivery vehicles with coffee added.

Speaking of the natives…

Curmudgeons and the Transplants
As a non-native Seattle resident, I have found most to be incredibly outgoing. The majority of the people I meet are from elsewhere and are itching to make new friends. The city is full of people who hail from an amazingly diverse areas of the world, all usually very intelligent and well spoken.

That said I am always happy to meet a native Seattleite, as their grumpiness and “let’s just stay at home” attitude reminds me why I rarely meet them. Seriously though, I rarely meet a native. Of the few I know, one of them built a house on the backside of Magnolia, in a neighborhood that shuns all public transportation and seems very secluded on purpose.

I did notice the natives come out of hiding from July to August, usually to make snide comments at the tourists.

I should mention that the majority of the people I’ve spent time with who are natives and tech-oriented seem to move to San Francisco. I ‘m sure as a native you’ve seen that migration happen as well.

The Design Community
I asked a Microsoft employee why I never saw any of them at Design events and the like. I was informed MS has a lot of internal events and the enormous number of designers they employ just don’t need to socialize in these circles (plus that pesky bridge between downtown and the East).

It seems the lions share of tech workers in this town are Engineers and the kind of folks that make everything run, not really the design crowd. The designers I enjoy spending time with are usually very outgoing.

San Francisco
Is awesome.
Wine county? Check.
The tech hub of the world? Check.
A small restaurant with grilled cheese that can cost over $15? Check.
Full of tech friends originally from Seattle? Check.
Less strip clubs than Portland? Probably.
A house by the park? Probably not.

Twitters
I met you because of Twitter.
Make Twitter better Mike, you’ll do a great job.