Sure, good rant, but what are the alternatives for real-time notifications that do not require a "nerd degree" to configure? There are one. Also, practically s

Sure, good rant, but what are the alternatives for real-time notifications that do not require a "nerd degree" to configure? There are one. Also, practically speaking - filtering out specific tweets and alerting on them is an issue with a Twitter client, and not the Twitter platform. Similarly, the privacy setup can be readily handled either via direct messages or by protecting tweets. In other words, Twitter is really not a bad choice for their purpose. Not ideal, but still a good functional fit.