What we really need is this setting to be per-followee. I have written more about this on my website. http://www.saurik.com/id/11
leliathomas
· 6 months ago
Agreed. I want to see the conversations of friends and strangers I'm interested in. I don't give a flip about celebrities' conversations with everyone.
karolijn
· 6 months ago
I hadn't even thought of this before, but this is a great idea. I used the see-all-replies feature when I moved to a new city and wanted to meet new people. I've since turned it off because of the 'noise' but it would be great to keep it on for just certain people that are likely to lead to new connections.
TJ Anderson
· 6 months ago
been watching this all night. It seems as if people don't care about there replies nearly as much as they care about there choices. Most of those crying out for a change back, didn't use the feature in the first place. Social media is not communistic, it's not even democratic for that matter. They don't want to be ruled by executives or even majority rule, they want to be the dictator of there own sovereign homepage.
Kevin Montgomery
· 6 months ago
Twitter, you need to change it back. Period. With Love, Kevin Montgomery @kevinmontgomery
Paul Smith
· 6 months ago
"Hey! Thanks for coming to the party! There are loooooads of people here! Just remember, you can only get involved in conversations with people you know. We're pretty strict on that - don't want you seeing some random conversation that interests you and have you making new friends, eh?"
If people see this minutiae as noise, they had an option for screening it out. For those who found it fun (and in my case, invaluable to my work for picking up news leads and content for my writing) the decision has stripped away any choice in the matter. Restricting timelines to only including content concerning people you follow is pointless and damaging.
I'm not sure Twitter appreciates what it is they've created, if mandatory rulings like this are considered in the best interest of the service.
Doubledown Tandino
· 6 months ago
I even think the issue itself is hard to understand. As a twitter user, you cannot even see what's been removed from view, and the twitter company description doesn't make sense. I'm finding it hard to understand now what I'll be seeing and what I won't be seeing... and I can't even comprehend what others will see when I tweet. The point is.... open free all streams for everyone.... today marks the next step in the coffin on twitter and the migration to friendfeed. http://twitpic.com/51728
Shawn Farner
· 6 months ago
Yeah, I'm sure every Twitter user is going to run to FriendFeed now. o_O
farhanlalji
· 6 months ago
It's all about options. Giving something and then taking it away completely is not the same as introducing a new feature (as facebook did with newsfeeds). If you're taking things away make sure people don't like the feature your removing all together.
Stuart Flatt
· 6 months ago
Does this post have the facts right? You never get all @replies as that would mean everyone. What it actually means is you could see an @reply assuming you were following them, and you did not need to follow the other person?
Not you will only get @replies if you follow both people, which personally is my preferred method. Why would you want to see an '@mom dinner for 6 please?'.
If people want the option leave it, but the standard should be you only see conversations that you follow.
Sheamus
· 6 months ago
While I agree we should have the option to turn this on/off ourselves, at least 98 per cent of Twitter users did not make use of, nor were not even aware of, this facility. That number (98%) was provided by @ev a year ago to the day, and is likely well over 99 per cent now, given Twitter's recent boom. Why? Because it was the default setting, and very few people changed it.
Sure, "very few" still equates to several hundred thousand, but it does seem to be a case of majority rule here, for Twitter. Poor a decision as it was, one can somewhat understand why a service that 98-99+ per cent were not taking advantage of might be removed.
It’s increasingly apparent that those users that did have their settings pegged on all replies seemed to feel that this was something everybody was doing, when this couldn’t be further from the truth. Moreover, it's now obvious that a lot of people didn’t understand how @replies worked, and started many messages with @username, not realising the network treated this as a reply, and it would have been invisible to 98+ per cent of their followers (assuming all things being equal).
(For more detail on how Twitter will be impacted by this decision, please see my blog.)
Jeff O'Hara
· 6 months ago
Not sure why people are complaining, just create a saved search of your username and all fixed :)
Andy
· 6 months ago
Don't fix something that's not broken... period.
Georg Portenkirchner
· 6 months ago
Facebbok tries to be like Twitter, but now Twitter became as boring as Facebook!
roncasalotti
· 6 months ago
Let's face it, removing choice for this function serves one purpose only -- reducing bandwidth requirements for Twitter. If doing this to improve user experience were the case, the options would remain -- defaulting to what Twitter believes is the "desired" setting. This has the potential for greatly reducing Twitter's effectiveness as a business tool for companies wishing to engage their customers wherever they aggregate on the Web (whether individually known to them or not). Yes, you can use third-pary apps to do this, but why should you have to?
AlissaSheley
· 6 months ago
I really hope that Twitter will reverse this latest "update". I see where they are coming from in regards to cutting out some of the Twitter noise, but is it not enough to just make that a person's personal choice? Coming from a marketing standpoint, this will really cut down on some of the effectiveness of Twitter in allowing brands to "listen" to what people are saying about them in the Twitterverse. That listening fuction is the first step of getting these brands to participate and actively engage customers and build relationships, thus providing better products and services. I can only hope that Twitter will realize the value that it provides and reverse their decision on the @replies.
Mary
· 6 months ago
Why didn't they just make the mutual followers view the DEFAULT? That seemed to be the problem, that it was showing everyone right out of the gate.
Jorge Barba
· 6 months ago
I think this is Twitters way of dealing with their retention rate of new users to service. You can see that they're clearly moving to the use of their recommendation system which included people they choose and not us.
GrowMap
· 6 months ago
You are probably correct. When a company does something that makes no sense TO US it is usually because their goals are NOT what we think they are - even if we what we think is based on what they SAY their goals are.
Navahk
· 6 months ago
I also agree with this, you can find people in other ways. No need for them to read your discussions.
Richard Pendergast
· 6 months ago
Twitter is a real time discussion medium - not a broadcast medium. We discuss things, and the value is in the conversation.
As an example of why this latest move by Twitter is a really bad call, take the Australian federal budget which aired last night, and which was discussed in real-time via Twitter.
Watching the budget on television I would have just sat back and listened with no opportunity to participate in discussions, to ask questions, or to provide insight. Following the coverage on Twitter on the other hand I was able to actively take part in an ever increasing conversation.
My experience of the event was one of a discussion which grew quickly from the couple of friends I have who know the space, to one involving 20 or 30 actively involved parties.
The reason this was possible is that each time a friend replied to a question I was not aware of in a way that interested me, I was able to simply follow the user asking the question, in order to add them to the discussion.
Take away the ability to grow your awareness of others by picking up on replies not directed at you, and the only people who will get anything out of coverage such as this are the ones with the largest number of followers present.
This takes us right back to the days when we had to wait until those with the reach pulled in all of the information available and passed it on. This is television. This is sad.
krc936
· 6 months ago
Personally I prefer not to see everyone's @ replies in my Twitter feed.. But I agree that this should be each user's choice.
homeofgolftv
· 6 months ago
Surely it is only a matter of time before Twitter reverse this poorly thought out decision
gwendolen
· 6 months ago
The @replies are the best way to discover new people on Twitter. Why on earth would one want to take that away?
GrowMap
· 6 months ago
This also means that you can not @reply to anyone who is not already following you so effectively you can not reach them at all any more.
Many do not realize there was an option under Settings, Notices that allowed you to decide which @replies you would receive. If you had that set to everyone ANYONE who wanted to contact you could.
Do you know how many times someone has asked me to DM them that wasn't following me so I could not use DM? Now I won't be able to send them an @ message either so they'll just think I'm ignoring them.
The workaround is to use the search function to search for your @messages but even this is only going to work if Twitter keeps those messages available for search. They might just delete them all.
Kenya
· 6 months ago
This is not the case as people who I do not follow are still able to @ me.
Spot Cool Stuff
· 6 months ago
Like everyone else here, I think this is a terrible change. It is the equivalent of hosting a party but forbidding people from speaking to anyone they didn't know before the party began.
Zigor
· 6 months ago
This post so reminds me of yesterday's post from LC.
Evil Twitter.
Bluesconnect
· 6 months ago
As a new twitter, I found replies very helpful in learning twitter, meeting new twitters and finding great tweets!
All Comments
With Love,
Kevin Montgomery
@kevinmontgomery
If people see this minutiae as noise, they had an option for screening it out. For those who found it fun (and in my case, invaluable to my work for picking up news leads and content for my writing) the decision has stripped away any choice in the matter. Restricting timelines to only including content concerning people you follow is pointless and damaging.
I'm not sure Twitter appreciates what it is they've created, if mandatory rulings like this are considered in the best interest of the service.
I'm finding it hard to understand now what I'll be seeing and what I won't be seeing... and I can't even comprehend what others will see when I tweet.
The point is.... open free all streams for everyone.... today marks the next step in the coffin on twitter and the migration to friendfeed. http://twitpic.com/51728
Not you will only get @replies if you follow both people, which personally is my preferred method. Why would you want to see an '@mom dinner for 6 please?'.
If people want the option leave it, but the standard should be you only see conversations that you follow.
Sure, "very few" still equates to several hundred thousand, but it does seem to be a case of majority rule here, for Twitter. Poor a decision as it was, one can somewhat understand why a service that 98-99+ per cent were not taking advantage of might be removed.
It’s increasingly apparent that those users that did have their settings pegged on all replies seemed to feel that this was something everybody was doing, when this couldn’t be further from the truth. Moreover, it's now obvious that a lot of people didn’t understand how @replies worked, and started many messages with @username, not realising the network treated this as a reply, and it would have been invisible to 98+ per cent of their followers (assuming all things being equal).
(For more detail on how Twitter will be impacted by this decision, please see my blog.)
Coming from a marketing standpoint, this will really cut down on some of the effectiveness of Twitter in allowing brands to "listen" to what people are saying about them in the Twitterverse. That listening fuction is the first step of getting these brands to participate and actively engage customers and build relationships, thus providing better products and services. I can only hope that Twitter will realize the value that it provides and reverse their decision on the @replies.
As an example of why this latest move by Twitter is a really bad call, take the Australian federal budget which aired last night, and which was discussed in real-time via Twitter.
Watching the budget on television I would have just sat back and listened with no opportunity to participate in discussions, to ask questions, or to provide insight. Following the coverage on Twitter on the other hand I was able to actively take part in an ever increasing conversation.
My experience of the event was one of a discussion which grew quickly from the couple of friends I have who know the space, to one involving 20 or 30 actively involved parties.
The reason this was possible is that each time a friend replied to a question I was not aware of in a way that interested me, I was able to simply follow the user asking the question, in order to add them to the discussion.
Take away the ability to grow your awareness of others by picking up on replies not directed at you, and the only people who will get anything out of coverage such as this are the ones with the largest number of followers present.
This takes us right back to the days when we had to wait until those with the reach pulled in all of the information available and passed it on. This is television. This is sad.
Many do not realize there was an option under Settings, Notices that allowed you to decide which @replies you would receive. If you had that set to everyone ANYONE who wanted to contact you could.
Do you know how many times someone has asked me to DM them that wasn't following me so I could not use DM? Now I won't be able to send them an @ message either so they'll just think I'm ignoring them.
The workaround is to use the search function to search for your @messages but even this is only going to work if Twitter keeps those messages available for search. They might just delete them all.
Evil Twitter.