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All of us our sick of hearing about Anthony Weiner and all the jokes that are associated with what he did and his name.  Everyone says the guy is an idiot, and I agree he is an idiot for lying.  Some of my technology compatriots have said he is an idiot for not knowing how Twitter works, but this is where my views differ.

As the story goes, Weiner got himself in trouble when he typed the “@” symbol, which in Twitter speak means you are mentioning the person’s name instead of the letter “d,” which means you are sending a private message to the person, when he composed his tweet.  As a result a “private” direct message became a public message.  Are you kidding?  How intuitive is that?  From a product, Twitter is lacking the fit and finish, and I am putting that kindly.  It is the reason that there are tons of 3rd party Twitter clients and that it is a tool that most people use to read tweets instead of write tweets.  Perhaps Apple and iOS will make Twitter a better product for the massess to use and contribute to.

Weiner is wrong for lying and that is why he is being asked to resign.  He even may be an idiot for not knowing the difference between typing an “@” and a “d,” but Twitter has done a poor job in evolving the product around the syntax that is being created around its product.  The hashtag, @ mentions, direct mentions, replies, and retweets, all have made Twitter a better product, but how it is implemented in Twitter.com is very unintuitive.