Almost 2 years after launching Windows 8, social media sharing is a mess
By Stephen Pate – You can’t Tweet stories you like with Windows 8.1 on the a computer or a Windows Phone 8.1.
It is hard to imagine an operating system today that does not support social media sharing but that’s the state of Windows 8.1.
Windows 8.1 has plenty of great features but it is the unfinished feel of Microsoft’s flag-ship operating system that continues to plague users.
I was reminded again this morning when I tried to share a story on Bing News via Twitter from my Surface 2. I got the error screen above.
Twitter – Something went wrong and this app can’t share right now. Try again later.
There is no “try again later” fix.
And the Windows 8.1 (beta) update to Windows Phone 8.1, removed Tweeting from Windows phones in April.
I’ve known about this from November 2012. I reported the issue in 2013. At first Microsoft Support said the feature failure was intentional. That is, the Windows programmers intended Charms Share to fail.
I got the run-around by Microsoft support until they had someone confirm it with me in a session where Support took over my computer and replicated the problem over and over. Windows 8.1 Charms Share Does Not Work
Like I say, there are plenty of cool features in Windows 8.1 such as shared Internet Explorer 11 favorites and logins across multiple computers and tablets. But Charms Share is more of a Fail than a feature.
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Roy Baldwin (@creativepubtalk)
Just happened to me on new Surface Pro3 – can only share using twitter link on the specific site. I’m back to the iPad – its pathetic and then the twitter app locks up and you have to restart.
Stephen Pate
After I posted the story, the big boys of Windows blogging including Paul Thurrot ganged up on Twitter to slam me. In the end they had to agree that Microsoft changed the rules on 8.1 and did not get consensus from Twitter, only the third largest social media site. On Windows Phone there are some third party apps that will patch the issue but that is not the point. Microsoft cannot act arrogantly with the user community.