I’m new to Twitter. And by “new,” I mean that I’ve been playing with the service for a few months, but only recently started actually having conversations. I have a feeling that a great deal of my followers only followed me because I followed them. A few days ago, I had a brief conversation with @jongos regarding aid, development, and corruption. He quoted me on Appfrica, and at least a dozen people have followed me since.

I’ve also noticed that Twitterers (tweeters?) are quick to respond when I ask questions and reply to their comments, no matter how A-List they may or may not be.  Lessons learned?  Stop pretending like I’m back in high school and too shy to talk to the popular guys at a school dance!  People love to talk!

Twitter recently stopped sending tweets out via SMS to Africa. To be fair, they stopped service in a lot of other parts of the world too, but it’s disenchanting to discover that we West Africans are not on their list of future locations (i.e. places where they plan to negotiate with cellular providers).

Ouch.

As an IT worker who does not have Internet access at home (6 months of saying “we’ll get it next month” has yet to yield desired results), Twitter quickly proved an invaluable source of news and happenings. Even someone as unplugged as myself (I am embarrassingly bad at the social media game) found it useful. Wordpress development? Wordpress plugins? Global voices? BarCampAfrica? Barak Obama? All on Twitter, all great to have with me during long weekends of unconnectivity.

Hash, of whom I’m a great admirer, recently wrote about a vision for a Twitter competitor here in Sub-Saharan Africa. Any service that would allow instant cheap communication, free from web interface, paid from SMS, could gain a huge following. Look how popular services like hi5 and facebook are here in Cotonou.

It’s a shame that Twitter cut us off just as the conversation could have started. What kinds of tools CAN be used for cheap communication here in Benin? The answer is that today, there aren’t many at all. Tomorrow, though, who knows?

What an exhausting and expensive failure.

A little more than three weeks ago, a client told us about a new ISP setting up shop here in Cotonou. As we can’t get DSL where we live, a wireless connection had obvious appeal. We walked into their boutique, and told their sales reps to convince us that they’re the best game in town. And they did!

After all of the awful service we’ve gotten at Bénin Télécom, the nat’l service providor, and all the awful stories we’d heard from everyone else with an internet connection in Benin, we were more than suprised to find knowledgeable sales staff and great pre-sales service at Isocel. Their prices were reasonable, and we stopped in two days later to complete the deal.

Technicians showed up two hours later to install our antenna, and everyhing worked perfectly. You can’t get that kind of service in the States.

Two days later, we found the first cloud in the sunny skies of Internet access at home. The connection was only reliable during off-hours. Nights and weekends are great for downlaoding movies, but not so great for actually trying to get clients online. Two weeks after the first call, and we haven’t yet resolved the problem.

ARGH. They don’t believe us when we tell them that the connection’s inconsistant; we don’t believe them when they say they’re working on it.

So we’ll see how long the connection lasts. For now, we’re taking advantage of it to get some work done on a Saturday afternoon.

And it is AWESOME.

When it works