How could the railway effectively replace Twitter?

[Bletchleyite]

OK, to start this, let's say Twitter collapses in electronic flames this week, and let's not just go to the easy option of "use Mastodon instead" (much as a dedicated National Rail Mastodon server, or one run by DaFT for all UK transport providers, might actually be an option).

How could the railway replace Twitter's immediacy and effectiveness at information dissemination and customer service access without substantially increased cost? (The latter rules out setting up a massive call centre so the same immediacy can be obtained by telephone, for example).

Bonus points for improving accessibility.

 

[skyhigh]

How could the railway replace Twitter's immediacy and effectiveness at information dissemination and customer service access without substantially increased cost?

Just use Facebook, as they already do.

 

[SargeNpton]

The creators of Twitter set up a new system, using completely new software - which all of Twitter's current users pile into.

Musk then spends the next 10 years trying to sue them under one pretext or other.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Just use Facebook, as they already do.

Facebook is dying as a platform, much slower than Twitter. I'd not say it's a full replacement as such.

 

[James H]

Just use Facebook, as they already do.

Facebook really isn’t good for real-time stuff - it often surfaces posts that are hours/days old. And twitter’s concept of threading is good for incremental updates on a developing situation which you can’t do on Facebook.

Twitter is also public by default, and easily searchable. You can just search for the name of a place or station and immediately see if other people are reporting disruption in that area.

 

[SynthD]

Whatsapp bots, where you can ask questions or subscribe to events relevant to you?

The government is already on discord (where they permitted reactions, with funny results). I'm glad we won't be going back to text messages.

 

[ashkeba]

It does not need to be mastodon. Any "fediverse" site would work. That is part of the point.

When is the next TOC name change expected and who will be first to pay Musk for a blue tick to con people out of bank details claiming it is to send delay repay?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 18 Nov 2022 ==

Twitter is also public by default,

For how long? The login prompts have become more frequent since the change of direction.

 

[tbtc]

Facebook really isn’t good for real-time stuff - it often surfaces posts that are hours/days old. And twitter’s concept of threading is good for incremental updates on a developing situation which you can’t do on Facebook

Agreed, I often find that my “suggestions”/ “recommendations” are things like seeing a football team posting their squad on Saturday lunchtime for their fixture that afternoon (with the obligatory uniting slogan/ rallying cry) despite the fact that this was three days ago now - it’s terrible for posting things out of order (whereas Twitter shows things in chronological , the only out of order is the CEO!)

Twitter is also public by default, and easily searchable. You can just search for the name of a place or station and immediately see if other people are reporting disruption in that area.

That’s why it’s so good for travel problems, you will easily find people discussing a particular issue by searching for a logical hashtag (compared to Facebook where, because profiles contain a lot of private/ sensitive information and photos, most profiles are locked/ secured, so you have no idea what other people are talking about)

If I need to know why there’s no train from Reston to Edinburgh, I don’t need a bespoke answer, I don’t need someone at the TOC to have to spend the time sending customised responses to the millions of people so used Reston Station on a typical day, I just want to find out what the disruption is/ how long it’s expected to last/ what contingency plans there are for things like alternative ticket acceptance or replacement buses

one tweet can answer this for huge numbers to see, whereas going back to phone calls or letters would be a lot slower/ require huge additional numbers of staff etc, because I can’t see the letters being sent to others/ hear those phone calls, so I’ll need my own response to be provided

Plus, the “blue” ticks meant that I could trust who the TOC was/ who the local journalist taking pictures of the flood for the regional newspaper was etc, so I was confident of sources without having to decide who to trust or find the best website - especially given the way that average members of the public might have no idea what the appropriate websites for their TOC is - I have colleagues who still refer to the XC service up the ECML as “Virgin” (they’d be surprised to find it was actually the German government!)

It was simple, it was all in one place, it could be relied upon. It’s ruined

 

[HSTEd]

I would suggest the best bet would just be to provide a railway RSS feed, removes the chance we will be forced to do this again later.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I would suggest the best bet would just be to provide a railway RSS feed, removes the chance we will be forced to do this again later.

Most people wouldn't know what an RSS feed was nor how to consume one, though. It also doesn't deal with customer service interactions.

For disruption information, JourneyCheck was hard to beat.

 

[W-on-Sea]

Fairly confident that Twitter is going nowhere anytime soon, despite the numerous bits of huffing and puffing going on at present, and things will essentially continue as they are

 

[zwk500]

Whatsapp Numbers for Customer Inquries to replace twitter DM, and then Mastodon/Discord/Reddit updates for major incidents.

In the longer term, build an 'Incident tracker' functionality into NRE, so that all the links to alerts/explanations/advice can be in a central point, and it can be linked to the journey planner instead of just 'check before your travel'. A DM facility would also be part of this, linking to each TOC's comms team.

 

[GusB]

Most people wouldn't know what an RSS feed was nor how to consume one, though. It also doesn't deal with customer service interactions.

Some people don't know what a Twitter feed is, nor how to use one. Customer service interactions can be dealt with by providing links to an update page on the relevant train operating company's website, with a button to "Contact Us" if necessary. Company websites should be the first point of contact. That information should then be replicated across whatever other channels the company uses, be it social media or a recorded message that gets played out to customers who call during times of disruption.

You're an early adopter of technology - I understand that. I also understand that not everyone is able to adapt at the same pace as you do. There have been countless discussions on the forum about your desire to automate things as much as possible to make your own life simpler, but you absolutely refuse to accept that there are some people who are wary of automatic stuff. You call people out as being "Luddites" and "Refuseniks". Sorry, but I don't have the same desire to cut off all human contact in the way that you appear to do.

What annoys me most is that you seek to deny people choice. You may prefer to interact with someone on Twitter while I prefer to call someone and hear a real voice at the end of the phone; it's not your right to deny me that option.

 

[tomuk]

How is the single GBR website including ticket sales getting on?

 

[AngusH]

Apologies if you are fully familiar, but your comment seemed to suggest that you're not a twitter user.
If you don't use twitter then the issues may be unfamiliar.

The railway companies and network rail already extensively use twitter, but there are significant concerns this week that the twitter system may collapse or be closed down.

The problem is not replacing telephones or websites with twitter, rather that the current use of twitter by railway companies may need to be immediately replaced on short notice.

Twitter has its problems but it can be very useful for transport updates and communication.
Especially in its ability to scale without collapsing under the load.


(Sorry again if this is rehashing things you know already)

Edit: I had assumed you weren't familiar with it, but then I read the other thread and you mentioned twitter so I'm not quite clear about where the thinking is going.

If it gets closed, existing twitter functionality needs replacing with something.
Running a large scale, real time messaging platform is technically difficult and I'm unconvinced railway companies wish to do so themselves, assuming they have the spare technical capacity (which is unlikely)

edit: some word choices

 

[Ken H]

The place for service issue announcements is on the National Rail website ans app IMHO.
It should be possible to make the app put alerts up on your device. Maybe the website also.

 

[Bletchleyite]

What annoys me most is that you seek to deny people choice. You may prefer to interact with someone on Twitter while I prefer to call someone and hear a real voice at the end of the phone; it's not your right to deny me that option.

I should make clear that I do not propose the removal of any existing channels including telephone.

 

[py_megapixel]

Most people wouldn't know what an RSS feed was nor how to consume one, though.

It wouldn't be that hard for NRE to have a browser-based interface that reads the RSS feeds and presents them in an easily understandable way.

Actually, my preference would be for one of those "status page" type things (Reddit has a good example) but adapted to deal with things in the real world rather than web services. These have functionality which allows live updates about incidents as well as a general overview of the service status. But there should definitely be some sort of API for third-party developers to access the same data.

It also doesn't deal with customer service interactions.

There are a wealth of live-chat "solutions" available for websites - just pick any of them.

 

[James H]

Live chat on a website isn't a replacement for one-to-many communication on Twitter, where one person's public interaction can also benefit other users, in principle driving down the number of individual contacts required

 

[zwk500]

Live chat on a website isn't a replacement for one-to-many communication on Twitter, where one person's public interaction can also benefit other users, in principle driving down the number of individual contacts required

No, but websites like Facebook, Reddit and Discord also provide that functionality.

 

[philosopher]

Set up an email or text alert system. Users obviously would opt in and could select which train operators and / or services they most frequently use so they only get alerts specific to their regular journeys.

 

[david1212]

Sort out Journeycheck so it includes all operators.

Chiltern works well as a single route but to check another route where Chiltern do not serve requires loading another operator website.
Similarly CrossCountry will not accept London. Hence e.g. can not quickly check Paddington - Reading (GWR) then Reading - Banbury (XC) if Chiltern disrupted.

If any station or pair of stations could always be entered then much easier to consider alternatives.

 

[fishwomp]

Twitter has always been an inappropriate place for information, and got unusable for what it was elevated to long before Musk came along.

In recent pre-Musk times, you can't scroll more than a couple of messages before it locks further reading and tells you to sign in.

I have not and will never sign up to Twitter, of Facebook. I am not a luddite, I value my privacy.

Receiving information should never require a login to an unrelated third party.

 

[Ken H]

Receiving information should never require a login to an unrelated third party.

quite

 

[YorksLad12]

Receiving information should never require a login to an unrelated third party.

This has been a relatively recent thing with Twitter. Previously, you could read anyone's tweets & timeline without having an account yourself; and tweets could be embedded into websites. That way you get information onto two of your channels in one go.

But yes, wholly agree with you about signing up. I've had Facebook and Twitter for 15 years but only use one of them "in anger" (and that's with an account that's only 12 years old). But equally, for those that do have a presence on various social media platforms, having an account on them to push out key business information is useful (a useful addition, I mean).

 

[mike57]

Its an interesting discussion...

What Twitter offers: Real time updates from the TOCs and related content from other Twitter users on the ground, including pictures. The user submitted details often add information which allow you to make a better informed decision on your particular travel requirements.

As others have said Facebook is not good for immediate information, when viewing in a browser you can select 'Most recent' by editing the link, but that is a techy solution. Facebook doesn't offer threads and tags in the same way as Twitter.

Any GBR/TOC sourced solution is probably not going to allow comments and updates from passengers which is one of the major advantages with the Twitter solution.

Mastadon looks to be capable of filling the gap if Twitter 'crashes and burns' but it is not as mature, and how would the commercial side of it (TOCs using it as a distribution platform for information) tally with Not for Profit stance of Mastadon, would they make a financial contribution to the funding.

If Twitter fails because it goes into administration (or what ever the USA equivilent is) then there is a gap and nothing obvious to fill it, if it dies more slowly, then there will be time to adapt and move to a different platform.

As for the need to login and have an account in order to read tweets, at a basic level you can still conceal a lot of your private info, for example I never give my 'real' phone number, if I have to receive a verification message I use a burner sim. If privacy bothers you, there are tools to help maintain it, if it doesnt then you will just sign up.

Short term if it fails quickly then I assume TOCs will just use a combination of the other channels WhatsApp, Facebook, texts, emails and website, and then adopt whatever becomes the longer term replacement, as there will be, as its more than just the railways that use Twitter, and someone would step in to fill the gap and make money.

 

[Dai Corner]

Just use a throwaway email address and false personal details if you prefer. Apparently a large proportion of Twitter accounts are fake.

I don't use WhatsApp, but would that be any good for disseminating and discussing service information?

 

[fishwomp]

As for the need to login and have an account in order to read tweets, at a basic level you can still conceal a lot of your private info, for example I never give my 'real' phone number, if I have to receive a verification message I use a burner sim. If privacy bothers you, there are tools to help maintain it, if it doesnt then you will just sign up.

You've just summed up, in one, what the problem is: Privacy is not the automatic default position.

The problem we should solve is how to get information, it shouldn't require a diversion via burner phones.

 

[mike57]

The problem we should solve is how to get information, it shouldn't require a diversion via burner phones

Which comes back to the previous way Twitter used to operate, which was probably the right option, You do not need to reveal your identity to consume information, but you do need to if you wish to contribute information. Problem with that is it works against monetising the operation, as tracking you is one way advertising is targeted, even if the service is free. Maybe the open source Mastadon solution will gain ground and become the new Twitter

 

[popeter45]

if Mastadon is the solution i suspect it would be a gov wide server pool rather than one per department