Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

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Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

Bonnie Hancock(Honeyberrie) — Sun, 17 May 2009 00:44:31 -0000

Dear twitter techies,
I believe in truthfulness,fairness,equality,enabling,not disabling our voices;I believe in quality, not necessarily quanity,but where ,the limitation of friends,business possibilies,in mid conference is broken,and the ability to move forward is squelched,(for what ever reason you can drum up);is insulting seekers,followers and businesses .We trustingly put profiles, links, private information in some cases in your hands..Also I heard this has been a cause of monetary losses for more than one person..Many of the tactics of changing rules,taking away members you follow,and abruptly changing the way you answer others,causing file bugs to come up and only save what you respond to a follower to your own computer I;m sure you have you legal department working on each item as it comes up.,at lease I hope so.

I would seriously like you techies to think of us twitterers as ,"TWITTER". We are the members. the Congregation so to speak and without us ,Twitter is nothing but a name..Keep disecting Twitter
and soon it could become very still and lifeless..Lets see what kind of respect you can drum up for people who are here to teach others how to do business, or join a business venture,People who come on here to learn more about Social Networking,in the near future. I observe you as you observe me.

@TWITTER TECHIES, what are YOU doing@Honeyberrie

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

Michael — Fri, 15 May 2009 12:34:02 -0000

What I find amazing is that Twitter has recently landed a HUGE amount of additional funding. The only thing that users have seen happen with the service is a removal of functionality. This begs a few questions:

What is Twitter using their money for, new office chairs?
Who in their right mind offers functionality for their product that they're not prepared to scale? I can see that perhaps Twitter has been caught off guard by the numbers their getting thanks to Oprah and Ellen, but honesty especially with your hard core users, would have been nice.
How is this going to effect companies like Comcast who are doing such a great job responding to issues through Twitter, if they can only see conversations aimed at them? Other than being driven to use 3rd party apps with API call limitations?

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

@idaAa / Ida Aalen — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:32:38 -0000

I've suggested how the @replies-settings could have been designed differently, and then confusion shouldn't really have been a problem:
http://bit.ly/confusion

@replies aren't really that confusing, Twitter almost seemed to try to make them more complicated than they really were.

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

Alan Lee — Thu, 14 May 2009 02:38:59 -0000

The issue with recommendations is it wont work for me. I like to follow people / find people from people I currently follow as they are involved in things that I do, like user groups, products and/or services. A recommendation system will only push the big names to me which I may or may not have any interest in! #fixreplies!!!

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

ECS Dave — Wed, 13 May 2009 22:33:04 -0000

If you do NOT use the "reply to" button/feature the conversation is "broken", the "trail" is lost. Add your voice in favor of returning the CHOICE for all @replies http://gsfn.us/t/6g7y The "half" of the conversation you wanted to follow, is "gone" unless you "search" for it. And, if you're "late" to the conversation... Good Luck on finding it...

Tweet This!
Add your voice in favor of returning the CHOICE for all @replies http://gsfn.us/t/6g7y #fixreplies
Tweet This!

Be Well!
ECS Dave - http://twitter.com/ECS_Dave

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

eric — Wed, 13 May 2009 21:41:28 -0000

It's not just about finding interesting people though, so a "recommendation engine" isn't a complete substitute. I've seen many a tweet where an @reply is made with no real intention of the named person even seeing the tweet, but is instead expressed that way as a form of rhetoric. This is particularly evident when an @reply is made to someone that person doesn't even follow (let alone be followed by).

For example, I don't follow @oprah (and though I haven't checked I'm confident she's not following me either) ... and so a tweet like "@oprah pls bugger off kkthxbai!" is intended to be _seen_ by my friends, even if they too don't follow @oprah.

So, that's one unexpected usage which will be crushed. There are likely other forms of discourse also crippled in the crossfire. Gee, thanks.

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

Michael Bauser — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:11:22 -0000

I keep wondering why they don't emulate Facebook's "People You May Know" feature -- that is, if my Friend A & my Friend B are following Person C, recommend Person C as someone I might want to follow.

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

Michael Bauser — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:06:39 -0000

"Problem solved," except for the vast majority of your followers who (if they're like the vast majority of other Twitter followers) don't want to see @replies to people they don't follow. You're putting your need for self-promotion above the needs of your followers to understand what the hell you're talking about.

Do you really think you're so important that all your followers need to see all your half-conversations? If so, you're not really on Twitter for "conversation" -- you're on Twitter for self-aggrandizement.

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

Michael Bauser — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:59:49 -0000

When you posted a @reply in the old system, Twitter had to check the account of every one of your followers twice. Once to see if they following the person you replied to, and again to see if they were a "show all replies" user.

Apparently, they decided that doing a database check where only 1/50 results is "Yes" isn't worth the processing effort, so they dropped it, which means every @reply is only half as much work for Twitter's computers as it used to be. This might be important now that there are so many acccounts with 100K+ followers.

If reducing the amount of processing per tweet is their goal, it makes sense to start with the feature that had the lowest effective return (in that 98% of the time, it produced no human-visible result).

(Expanding @replies to @mentions is actually a lot smaller change, because Twitter only has to look up the accounts mentioned in the tweet. That has a much higher "success rate," in that people very seldom tweet about accounts that don't exist, so every lookup produces a human-visible result.)

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

Michael Bauser — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:40:39 -0000

You're not very good with cost/benefit analysis. You're advocating an approach that would make Twitter less usable?

If 98% of users didn't want to see all replies, using resources to filter those out makes perfect sense.

Using resources to add them back in for the 2% who did, probably makes less sense.

Your argument is all extremes, and no sense.

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

Michael Bauser — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:34:45 -0000

You've misunderstood the problem.

In the old system, everytime somebody published an @-reply, Twitter had to run two checks to determine who read that reply in their stream. One check to identify which followers were also following the recipient and another check to see which users wanted to see all @-replies. Keep in mind, that was 2 checks per follower of the person posting the @-reply.

See, that's Twitter's problem: Even though only 2% of users may have been using the "all replies" feature, it still required checking every follower for the flag. So everytime @aplusk posted an @-reply with his milllion-follower account, that was 2 million database lookups. Twitter just cut the processing power required by an @-reply in half, which matters once you start filling Twitter with celebrities and services that have hundreds of thousands of followers.

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

Gabe da Silveira — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:30:45 -0000

Good god, can the armchair architect meme please die! Twitter has put real engineering effort into building a scalable system. Your "solution" is just a brainstorm that they had probably within the first month of launching. It will not scale to 1% of their current traffic. The queue system they are running now is more scalable and subtle than anything that anyone is going to convey in a one-off comment. I don't understand why people insist on commenting endlessly out of ignorance.

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

anon — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:29:58 -0000

I really just want to see EVERYTHING my friends say, regardless of what it is. I don't see how letting me see everything is more difficult than having to filter out some things... seems like it'd be the other way around. I'm really, really frustrated.

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

Stephanie Booth — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:19:20 -0000

For me, the importance of partial conversations has not been mentioned in your post: those conversations are part of the "Twitter-life" of those I follow -- and that's the main reason I want to see them.

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

travist120 — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:17:42 -0000

I really don't understand.

Wouldn't they have to use some sort of "if" statement? Considering that it shows and @reply that has characters in front of it. It's got to check to see if you are following the person being mentioned, and with the new update, it has to check to see if there is an "in_reply_to_status_id"...ISN'T THAT MORE CODE THEN JUST DISPLAYING IT ALL?!

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

Kee Hinckley — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:14:14 -0000

It has to be related to caching somehow, but I agree. I have a lot of trouble imagining a database structure that makes it hard. They've got to be doing something weird with replies that takes them out of the main flow of your feed. Presumably they make an exception for people you follow (although that must make large follower lists pretty painful). That would explain why per-person-I-follow-settings are actually easier than not filtering at all. But it's still weird.

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

Florin Anghel — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:12:34 -0000

But I want to see the conversations between the people I follow and their friends! And there's no other feature that the Twitter team can implement to replace that one. Are they that stupid, or they're just pretending? After all, that's exactly what made Twitter so addictive. But I guess those guys are the only Twitter users that don't understand the real fun of using this social service. Yeah, I'm tough, but I'm fair!

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

Trina — Wed, 13 May 2009 16:59:21 -0000

I agree with this completely. Twitter is obviously having bandwidth issues, and they are trying to deal with it as quietly as possible. If they need more help and money, allow us to donate. I know donations aren't a permanent fix, but this is obviously a way to cut down on clutter.

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

CNastie — Wed, 13 May 2009 16:50:17 -0000

No one used the features that were disabled. Most of the people who are complaining don't know what they are complaining about. They are only complaining because everyone else is. Stop reinforcing the stereotype that Twitter users are whiners.

Get over it. There are 10 bazillion other ways to follow new people.

Twitter is free. Enjoy it.

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

@javig — Wed, 13 May 2009 16:47:00 -0000

Pete and others, take a look at the new Twitter's post here: http://blog.twitter.com/200... .

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

Lun Esex — Wed, 13 May 2009 16:42:25 -0000

Read/follow http://twitter.com/fix_replies on Twitter for info/history/workarounds on this and if you disagree w/ Twitter's decision to hide replies to people you don't follow.

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

Kee Hinckley — Wed, 13 May 2009 16:38:52 -0000

Hashtags are viral, but they build temporary communities. Listening to people talk to other people builds longer-term communities.

That said, apparently this feature was used by only 3% of the Twitter population (which is still a large number of people). Unfortunately for Twitter, that 3% was a rather vocal part of the population--those people who used twitter for building communities and socializing; not for announcements, following celebrities, or chatting with a fixed set of friends. It's a classic example of why you don't want to add or remove features in an application by voting on them--not all users are equally important to your company.

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

Bob Massey — Wed, 13 May 2009 16:30:40 -0000

Regarding the initial explanation of "it was confusing"...The only thing potentially confusing about the way it was is that I could see some people not realizing (at least for a little while) their @reply was being seen by all followers and not just the designated recipient. So to me if anything needed to be changed it would have been to add a setting allowing users' @replies to be seen by all or only that person. And keep the choice to read all such comments from people or just their updates and the @replies directed at you. Default behavior could have been the more private option for each, since it is believed the other way is "undesirable."

Re: Twitter’s Response to #fixreplies: We Can’t

infenoenigma — Wed, 13 May 2009 16:27:40 -0000

You're exactly right. I don't want to see every reply. I follow 400+ people, many of whom engage in conversations whenever they're spoken to. I don't need to see half of everything.

I'm completely fine with this change (although I personally would suggest giving us the option to see all @ replies on a user-by-user basis, like they do with the option to receive SMS's). What I will not be fine with is if people start using !@soandso or .@soandso or PR @soandso every time they reply to someone. That is going to fill my twitter stream up with noise, plain and simple, and that's not okay.