Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

Georgette Banker — Fri, 22 May 2009 01:39:41 -0000

THE TWITTER WHAT ARE YOU DOING SITE IS FUCKED UP IN SEVERAL WAYS!I SENT A COMMENT LAST NIGHT.IT ABVYOSLY BIDDENT GO THREW. THIS ONE HAD BETTER!I DONT WANT AN APPOLLIGY OR 2 CENTS.JUST FIX IT!

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

Beth — Mon, 18 May 2009 07:20:45 -0000

I've read 2% of users, now 3%- I think the tech issue explanation was a quick excuse to cover the mistake they know they made. If the technical aspects of the coding were in such disarray, that should have been the first point addressed. Even as a blogger, if something technical causes delays for my readers, I address it first and foremost. Not to mention, if "only 3%" used the option, why such an outrage by the Twitter community?

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

ibwoke — Sat, 16 May 2009 13:07:39 -0000

great point. i'm still pissed. my timeline is basically a ghosttown. argh!! i don't appreciate this "apology" or "explanation."

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

@DonnaMolinari — Sat, 16 May 2009 02:29:07 -0000

I think what they should have said was: the @reply was taking too much of a performance hit when it had to check all of the followers for the user and if many people were doing this at the same time I can see it brings the network and web server to it's knees.. As a QA engineer who has tested performance problems with web applications, I feel this is the issue. What is important to customers and end-users is 1) Performance and 2) UI.

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

Bizmeister — Fri, 15 May 2009 16:07:10 -0000

I guess I'm one of the 3%. I just want to reiterate that it makes it almost moot to follow "celeb" tweeters now bc followers will no longer be able to read answers to questions from fans posted by celebs (unless they RT). It's been great being able to follow conversations between people and this is no longer possible. I have defintely expanded my twitter networks by reading a reply and thinking "oh! I didn't know he/she tweeted!" I hope a solution is found soon.

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

Lemland — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:13:04 -0000

Being one of the 3% who used the feature, I miss it a lot. I miss seeing the tweets of various celebrities I follow that aren't directed to me, and it's going to be very annoying having to check all of their pages daily now for updates I've missed because they didn't show up on my time line.

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

spryka — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:03:54 -0000

Twitter is like a breath of fresh air on the Social Media scene. I have been on it for just a few weeks now and I have met several interesting people. It is a platform to network with people you would like to meet in real life.

KZ
http://ePostMailer.com

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

Micah — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:03:42 -0000

I think all you TWEETHEADS are people that believe you are smarter than everyone else. Your arrogance is appalling! You guys have no real value add to society as a whole. The company screwed up and did what most companies do not do...and that is state they screwed up and are actively fixing the problem.

Who cares what the issue was; they are fixing it. So get off all of your tweet boxes and get real jobs!!

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

Edward G. Talbot — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:58:37 -0000

I highly doubt twitter will lose many people over this. This latest post rings very true to me as an IT person.

The thing that jumps out at me is their continued insistence that this was confusing. maybe it was, but reworking Help and Settings pages certainly could have fixed that, so I just don't buy it as a legitimate reason to make the change. Specifically, they said

"People would change the setting and then not understand why their timeline had fragments of conversations."
I think this is very misleading. I think it's a lot more likely that new users to twitter didn't understand the fragments. I know it took me a week or two to start understanding the flow. I have serious trouble buying that twitter users other than new/infrequent users went to the trouble of changing the setting AND then were confused. So this seems to me to be a new user help/introduction problem.

" From the tweet author perspective, there was an unclear expectation as to who would actually see messages which often lead to trepidation when it came to using replies."
Twitter users need to be totally clear that unless their updates are protected or they are sending a DM, ANYONE can see them. Period. That includes non-twitter users. Operating under any other assumption is ridiculous and twitter could rectify this by making this clear. Don't put anything into your stream that you wouldn't want broadcast everywhere.

" Finally, even folks who understood the setting would complain that they couldn’t follow accounts with a high volume of replies because the replies overwhelmed their timeline."
This is the most ridiculous one. They could have changed the setting! You're saying they understood it, so they would know what to do. Now maybe they're upset because they only want to see @replies for some people but not others? Ok, well the solution didn't fix that and probably pissed them off as well.

I love twitter. I have no plans to stop using it even if they kept the change. and I certainly don't have any vitriol towards the people who made the decisions. But I hope they understand that the "design" reasons for the change simply don't hold up to any kind of scrutiny as justification. Better to just stop citing them.

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

Jason A. Nunnelley — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:06:31 -0000

How many software developers think filtering replies vs. NOT filtering replies SHOULD be exponentially simpler.

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

spryka — Fri, 15 May 2009 12:07:43 -0000

I just got a copy of http://ePostMailer.com and I would recommend to anyone who needs to send out an opt-in email mailshot. Its the best free desktop based email marketing software I have used so far.

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

Michael — Fri, 15 May 2009 11:37:47 -0000

While I find it hard to believe that only 3% of users utilize the @reply feature, perhaps that number is so small because of the ridiculous influx of celebrity Twitter followers, what isn't clear is if it will be put back or not. As almost every one of us early and power Twitter users has told Twitter, this particular feature is how our networks have grown, which in turn is how Twitter has grown. If Twitter is not going to give back the feature, then our networks will become stagnant as we won't grow them without knowing who to Follow. #followfriday and #newbietuesday help, but it's really about finding interesting people from seeing part of an interesting conversation, not just being told someone is cool. That's fine for Ellen, Oprah, @aplusk, and @mrskutcher, but how about those whose conversations are the real value of Twitter? Once more: it's about the content, but this change in functionality is now hiding that content.

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

Todd H — Fri, 15 May 2009 10:46:09 -0000

Wow lots of YouTube-level commentary here. This explanation seems perfectly reasonable, and the fact that they're working to restore the functionality means we'll have back what we're all wanting.

It's understandable that Twitter's explosive growth would uncover kinks in the way things were implemented when the service was much smaller, and implementing new hacks to fix it as some of you have suggested is a laughable solution. I have more faith in the Twitter team to come up with workable, scalable solution than all of the armchair programmers who say it should be an easy fix.

And for those of you are giving up on Twitter and switching over to Facebook, good riddance.

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

Michael Bauser — Fri, 15 May 2009 10:31:17 -0000

A logical person would have understood that the part of transaction with the highest server cost isn't based on the number of active users, it's based on the number of follower accounts. Every time somebody posed an @reply, Twitter had to check all of the poster's followers to see if they were an all-reply-enabled account, whether or not that account is "active". In the cost/benefit analysis, active and inactive users have the same cost. Therefore, the number of accounts is the more important number.

(Obscure irony: A lot of Twitter's inactive accounts are probably created by people who were invited by their nerd friends, followed their nerd friend, then stopped using Twitter. Twitter's most ardent evangelists may have contributed heavily to this problem.)

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

Michael Bauser — Fri, 15 May 2009 10:01:33 -0000

You humble opinion betrays a deep ignorance about how captialisim works. Also, it shows that you still don't understand this is an engineering problem.

Sometimes, tech companies have to look at features of their products and decide if the return is worth the investment. Twitter had a feature that an overwhelming majority of its users don't use, that was taking up a disproportionate amount of engineering resources. They had to drop the feature, or reivent their architecture (apparently). They did a cost/benefit analysis, and decided dropping the feature was the smart thing to do.

That's life at a tech company. Sometimes you try an idea that sounds cool, it doesn't work out, and you drop it. If companies felt obligated to provide enternal support for features that on 2-3% users ended up using, it would discourage innovation, because management wouldn't want to greenlight as many new ideas. There has to be room for failure to encourage innovation.

Listen, I agree that it sucks when a website loses a feature you like. (Facebook does it to me a lot.) But I understand why it happens, and I see why Twitter did what it did. At this point, everybody who uses an assinine phrase like "in my opinion" and "even if only 2% used it" is just being oblivious, or throwing a tantrum.

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

Jason A. Nunnelley — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:57:08 -0000

I'm late to the conversation, but it's absolutely amazing to me that tech investors and administrators don't take a page from this history book and change their behavior patterns... well, I say amazing. What I mean is to say it's amazing that I know this won't change anything.

In order for Twitter's architecture to have an inability to store a single YES/NO feature with relatively cheap overhead it's got to be absolutely broken. Twitter's volume of text messaging is huge, but the tasks are relatively simple. And, this particular task is extremely simple. If it is in fact crippling, and I take Twitter at their word, this is mindbogglingly bad. Only, it's a trend.

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

Scott — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:04:13 -0000

My sentiments exactly, Farnham. They owe us nothing. They provide an awesome, free service. The entitlement mindset is rampant, though. Maybe Twitter can get bailout money, too. Look how it helped Chrysler. Uh, nevermind.

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

Stephanie Booth — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:01:57 -0000

I'm really glad they posted this explanation. However, I'm uncertain about the future: I like seeing "all the tweets" those I'm following send out, just because I use twitter to see what's going on in their world. I really hope Twitter will offer that option, but I'm afraid they might not, because they're so focused on "@replies to non-followees as a means of discovery of new people".

To me, "show me @replies only if I follow the person they're sent to" is artificial, and I don't like it at all.

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

AlexSchleber — Fri, 15 May 2009 05:22:20 -0000

Now you disappoint me, Scott Stratten (@unmarketing). You didn't want to see what your closest 25k friends were writing to others? :)

(Ironically the larger your following/follower set gets for someone such as yourself, the larger the % of @ reply tweets that will surface in your timeline even with the default setting.)

I am now seeing A LOT less of you, is that truly what you are arguing for? See, I used to click through a lot of your little "Well played Sir!" and "...and by XYZ, I mean..." type @ reply banter with peeps. Most of it is GONE now... If anything, Twitter should be integrating MORE conversation threading/visibility into the platform, not less. It already works on Search.twitter.com, so what gives?

The point is, it's better to have access to the full data set (which should also be less expensive database lookup-wise), and then filter down from there as you see fit. Twitter's spirit is openness (maybe a lot more open than its founders foresaw), why deny access to an entire class of Tweets out of hand?

BTW, I find Mashable's lauding here of Twitter's apology as "frank and honest" almost as Orwellian as Twitter's language in all of this from the get-go. They (Biz, et al.) still continue to try (rather clumsily) to tell us what to think. Propaganda that can easily be spotted is... 2nd rate propaganda.

Also agree with people further down that the 3% of users number feels "massaged". If it were % of active users it should be a good bit higher. Don't trust any statistic you haven't forged yourself...

(Wrote a longer retort here:

http://alexschleber.postero...
)

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

Miladinoski — Fri, 15 May 2009 04:25:34 -0000

Nevertheless, it was an option, IMO if only 1% of the users were using it they should've left it, I don't see how they help the community by removing something that is totally optional and not default - even if only the 'power' users would make use of this (which is not totally true in this situation)

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

ECS Dave — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:47:53 -0000

While I appreciate the "effort" made to mollify the "power users" by Mr. Stone, I still am reading that the twitter we knew, is gone... and still suggest folks go to the GetSatisfaction website to continue the discussion - http://gsfn.us/t/6g7y and retweet the url to their followers...

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

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

LadyWrites — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:35:37 -0000

"This is a smart and necessary move by Twitter() that will no doubt ease tensions in the community." This statement is patently false and non-realistic. Just look at the posts pertaining to #fixreplies and try to repeat the statement truthfully. As to having discussions with users that made them think it was a good thing to do? Again, check out how many people are upset over it. I think that leaves a very, very small percentage who it was discussed with. I do, however, agree that the information on the feature was sketchy so not everyone could understand which option to use. If it was placing a burden on the system, it was being implemented incorrectly.

So, thanks, Twitter developers, for successfuly pissing off MOST of your users while making your program boring. You also succeeded in following in Facebook's footsteps: taking a highly successful site, arbitrarily changing successful features and annoying people.

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

zimzum — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:30:40 -0000

I'm still flabbergasted that they

1. Changed something without consulting people, dissing it as being "small" and "undesirable" even if 100,000 people explicitly decided to use it
2. Tried to cover it up with excuses
3. Provided no real answer to what they'll do next. Notice they say 'the use case...will return' but not that we'll actually *be able to read what people write* plain and simple. Sounds like a cop-out for the "contact discovery" feature they want to introduce.

An excuse is the least I expect. This is not what they've supplied. It's just a compilation of their non-replies and more, basically calling me an idiot by using the feature, as if I "didn't understand" what was it about.

Call me a jaded user complaining about something that's free, but up until now they had my utmost respect and trust, something I don't easily 'give' to a startup. That has been lost.

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

dwag — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:23:56 -0000

you took the words right out of my mouth. there are soooooooooo many inactive accounts due to people who sign up just to see what twitter is about or because they hear oprah is on it, but never tweet. and then there are the spammers who don't actually read the tweets of the 10,000 people they follow.

if twitter could query their db based on a minimum # of tweets sent to determine "active" users, the number who use the all @replies setting would likely be much higher than 3%. not exactly scientific but it would tell them more about how valuable the feature has become.

also, even if only 3% of your users are your "most active" users, do you really want to abruptly change the way they use your service? that 3% has likely made twitter into much of what it is today.

Re: Twitter: “We Screwed Up” on #fixreplies

Steve — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:23:02 -0000

What do I think? I think removing the feature is pretty idiotic ... watching other peoples' conversations is an important part of what is useful about Twitter.
Really, showing @replies should be the default. Make it show for everybody if they want to get rid of the option, rather than showing nobody.