My Random Keys

I just found out who you were 5 min ago and I hope that as the CEO of Twitter, you can help me out. You see, your app is poor for my health.

No, I'm not going to make this my McDonald's Too-Hot Coffee issue, nor will I blame world strife on a software app.  But your app unknowingly caused me significant mental strife and frustration. (While on vacation from work, a collection of 1's and 0's are legally allowed to be a source of mental strife and frustration.)

I am not a frequent Tweeter, but I do use Twitter to get information from colleagues from across the country (and even Canada!) and my mobile app provides me that access while I'm on the go.  I realized that if I could make each tweet announce themselves as "Hey, a $10 Billion company want to deliver a message to you", then I could pull over and attend to the important 140 characters.

I made a couple of ringtones and had them added to my iPhone. (That process is was more tedious than it should be and I'll write Tim Cook about that later.)  I tried different things on the iPhone and had to wait for my frequently-posting friends to send something out, but never heard my groovy sound. 

After researching it, I found out that the iPhone Tweet sound is for sending Tweets, not receiving Tweets.  An Apple support site finally shared that 3rd Party Apps control their own notification sound and that Twitter, your little blue bird, mandates the iPhone TriTone.  I can't change it. 

Please Mr Costolo, what would it hurt to open up that feature? It seems like a small thing to me.  Please ask your developers to open the choice to change the notification sound.

I hope to hear great news from you, after your July 4th vacation week of course.  I realize you are a busy man, but somewhere in the back of your mind, picture Andy Dufresne's library-building efforts and what he could have done with Twitter as his helper.  (...and I can copy/paste.) 

Regards,

Howard Martin

@mrmartinsclass