if i replied to these folks on twitter, you wouldn’t see it.
Twitter recently made some changes to their @-replies that mean you wouldn’t see my replies to any of the above folks unless you were following them as well. Why did they change this from a user setting to a mandatory filter? From the Twitter blog:
[R]eceiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don’t follow in your timeline is undesirable.
Strongly put, but wrong, Twitter. Exploring one-sided conversations is my primary way of finding new, interesting followers and overhearing fascinating conversations I otherwise wouldn’t be privvy to. “One-sided fragments” aren’t undesirable to me or other Twitter users that previously opted in to see all followees’ @-replies; it’s the jam & cake to my regular Twitter stream.
Biz said they’ve been studying users’ “usage patterns and feedback”, and I have no doubt they’ve done their homework. I suspect this decision was similar to Netflix’s earlier move to eliminate user profiles back in September. It’s an honest mistake: if only a small number of users use a feature, it’s reasonable to think they may not miss it when it’s gone. But Netflix reversed their decision once they realized how important the feature was to a small number of users, citing listened to the “well-reasoned, sincere responses of loyal members who very much value this feature.” Diplomatically put, and incidentally the reason my roommate and I didn’t cancel our Netflix account.
At this point, only a few hours after the changes, there’s been a lot of negative feedback from the Twitterverse. A lot. The fact that the official blog post has been rewritten from its earlier breezier (and more condescending) tone indicates that Twitter underestimated the reaction they’d receive.
It’s an easy fix: change things back, Twitter. If you’d like to do us one better, take a tip from Troy’s Twitter Script and give us inline context for @-replies. Here’s a visual example of how it easily removes the whole “one-sided [conversation] fragments” without removing functionality:
Lovely.
—Timoni
