Dear Twitter, fix this will ya?

Dear Twitter,

First I have to congratulate you on managing to keep your servers up and running, even as Rick Sanchez keeps steering more and more of CNN’s mainstream viewers toward Twitter today for the sake up keeping up with the latest news centered around Hurricane Gustav. It’s fairly self-evident that a site like Twitter will never be taken seriously outside of its most addicted users unless it can demonstrate that it can keep the lights on during important high-traffic moments, and while you’ve struggled with that mightily in the past, you seem to have finally overcome that particular obstacle. It may have something to do with the fact that it’s Sunday night and many of Twitter’s “regulars” aren’t particularly active right now, but the bottom line is that your servers are still up and running despite the presumably massive influx of new users and traffic from CNN.

Here’s the problem, though: despite the fact that Rick Sanchez has been careful to point out that his Twitter username is twitter.com/ricksanchezcnn, that isn’t going to stop any number of CNN viewers from heading straight for twitter.com/ricksanchez. Don’t believe me? Then explain how this obviously “dead” account suddenly has 555 followers, a number that’s jumping higher every time you reload the page? There are no updates to the @ricksanchez account, not even a photo, and only two people are being followed. There’s no other explanation other than that people mistakenly think this account belongs to CNN’s Rick Sanchez, and they’re following it expecting updates and discussion centered around hurricane Gustav.

Except that those 555 (now 564) people aren’t getting any updates. And if they’re Twitter newbies being shepherded in just because they were watching CNN, then they’re not even going to know why they’re not getting updates. And while many of those 564 566 people are just rubberneckers anyway, I’d bet at least a few of them live in New Orleans, perhaps still in their homes, perhaps evacuated, and they’re legitimately trying to use Twitter to get hurricane updates.

You can debate the sageness of that all you want (and in fact I can remember Rick Sanchez getting booed loudly at a hurricane benefit concert in Florida back in 1992, when he was a local newsman in the Miami – Fort Lauderdale area and not particularly respected), but the bottom line is that whether this really puts anyone’s life or peace of mind in danger or not, it does point to a larger problem: why isn’t Twitter doing anything about it?

Come on, this one’s easy. Not in a million years would I suggest that Twitter take the @ricksanchez account away from an actual legitimate user whose name happens to be “Rick Sanchez” just because there happens to be some guy by the same name on CNN who’s more popular (I certainly wouldn’t give up @billpalmer just because a newscaster happened to share my name). But while it’s not clear whether @ricksanchez is a never-used and long-dormant account that people are finding by accident, or whether some prankster created it this weekend just to have some fun, the bottom line is that @ricksanchez is not a legitimate Twitter account. And all Twitter would have to do to put a happy face in this situation would be to redirect @ricksanchez to @ricksanchezcnn. Maybe those 566 579 people are too stupid to be using Twitter in the first place, but let’s throw them a rope – especially considering that there might be some chance in some way that this might actually have some kind of positive effect on the hurricane situation.

So to whoever it keeping the lights on a Twitter headquarters this evening, I’m calling on you to make the smart move, make the easy move, and redirect a dead account to the user that every last one of those 579 581 users was trying to follow in the first place. These are the gimmes, the easy opportunities that when handed to you, you’ve got to jump on them. With a few exceptions, Twitter’s history has been that of not jumping on much of anything in the way of an obvious opportunity. But facilitating those 581 623 679 confused folks in being able to follow along with hurricane updates more easily would be great way for Twitter start transitioning toward a more proactive, socially conscious, and important calling.