Dear Twitter, There was an Error Updating the List

Or, how Twitter made me lose faith in their service ………..

I have been faithfully adding Port Elizabeth Twitter Fiends to the MyPEtwitterati list on Twitter for a while now and last week whenever I attempted to add someone to the list I kept on getting an error message thus; “There was an error updating the list”.

Trying to add a different user didn’t help. Ctrl F5 didn’t help. Restarting the browser didn’t help. Restarting the router didn’t help. Using a different bandwidth provider didn’t help. Restarting the computer didn’t help. A scheduled browser and Linux OS upgrade didn’t sort it out. Using a laptop and different OS as well as browser didn’t help. Waiting a couple of days didn’t help. Asking Twitter didn’t help.

FINALLY searching Google, eventually helped.

In the interim, MyPE had a plugin, Tweet Blender, hogging memory. Now Tweet Blender handled all the Tweets from the MyPEtwitterati list by feeding them to the RHS Sidebar – quite a nifty little app that many people used. SO, I thought to myself; “If I am having problems adding to the MyPEtwitterati list and Tweet Blender is being a memory pig it is no loss if I kick Tweet Blender to touch.” So, like a digital Percy Montogomery I hoofed Tweet Blender to touch and cut my losses.

Of course I can be quite pedantic so decided to give it one last whirl to see why I still kept on getting the ‘There was an error updating the list’ message.

Lo and Behold, buried in the comments section on one of the many thousands of results for the search query ‘There was an error updating the list’ was my very own eureka moment where one commenter said; “You have probably exceeded the 500 member limitation on the Twitter list.”

I admit that Twitter probably made that clear right in the beginning that lists are limited to 500 members but surely a better error message such as “You have exceeded your 500 member limitation” and NOT “There was an Error Updating the List” would go a long way in retaining someone’s (My?) loyalty?

Go give some of the MyPE Followers some LOVE.

Twitter should TELL ME when I’ve reached the list limit of 500. Instead, it responds with “There was an error updating the list.” Sloppy.11 September 2011 1:33 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite
PE News – Dear Twitter, There was an Error Updating the List: Or, how Twitter made me lose faith in their service… http://t.co/8VFLqjZnabout 21 hours ago via GoogleReplyRetweetFavorite
@Support “There was an error updating the list” can’t add accounts to list. Is it a browser issue?13 September 2011 9:29 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@DABieberBreezy “there was an error updating the list” o.O sorry but i don’t know what’s wrong, i’ll try list you later, i promise11 September 2011 2:08 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite
There was an error updating the list :O10 September 2011 5:16 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite