DISQUS

Prokofy · 6 months ago

Second, we’ve started designing a new feature which will give folks far more control over what they see from the accounts they follow. This will be a per-user setting

And here's what that nerf will likely be: the ability to vanity-search for yourself but not have anyone you don't like show up who is replying to you with @ -- the long-desire track-blow that Steve Gilmor lobbied intensively for last summer, and that Craig Newmark has recently demanded. The thin-skinned A-lister geeks are responsible for all this ultimately because they want to broadcast to throngs of adoring fans, but never hear from critics and dissidents. While per-user settings seems like ordinary civil liberties sort of stuff, look at the network effect of this behaviour massively-- legions of people blocking the back-talk of people they don't like, for arbitrary reasons, and as Twitter is increasingly used by public officials and mass media, handily being able to erase First Amendment and other constitutional rights to redress grievances. It's a bad development and one we should keep fighting.

Justin Taylor · 6 months ago

I too don't appreciate sudden changes that take features away, without any notice and basically make the service worse in my mind...

Having said that, I do find it pretty funny how demanding users are of a service that is absolutely and totally FREE for them to use...

This brings up the question, that shouldn't a company that provides totally free services be allowed to change their services, features and/or anything else, whenever they what or however they want?? Doesn't the service belong to them?

A rather interesting social phenomenon...

William Rose k. · 6 months ago

This is really good. I didn't even know this was an issue, guess I was to busy using http://www.twibeo.com (it's an improved Twitter. Just try it) :)

Erin · 6 months ago

this is not a temporary fix, it's a non-fix. I understand the need for change as a service grows but really this is ridiculous. Plus, now I don't even trust Twitter to be honest since that back-peddaling re: why the change was made in the first place.

Lynette · 6 months ago

The issue is that say you reply to someone else's tweet. You reply to them and they see your reply but so do all 75,000 of your readers. Removing the feature basically eliminated the reply with letting others see it thereby reducing the amount of views. Of course, that's 75,000 to 1. Some of us use this feature to find friends and follows so it's incredibly handy. Turning it off did nothing more than make many people disinterested in using Twitter. It's a feature that nearly every other social networking site lets you do, why not Twitter? It was probably just a knee-jerk reaction to a serious system overload. Redesigning it to set the follow level of people you follow is best. They're human just like the rest of us and they're working to fix it. We voiced our displeasure, they changed it back and are reprogramming. I say the upcoming change will be great. Rather than unfollowing you can just choose not to follow replies to and from for those individuals who chat more than you like. Good by me.

SJMorton · 6 months ago

I don't get it:

1) who types @username without using the reply button?

2) isn't this giving back the wrong half of the conversation?

Makes no sense to me and doesn't seem to even remotely fix the problem.

Michael Bauser · 6 months ago

1) People who are intentionally starting a person-to-person conversation (as opposed to replying to a random tweet).

2) I guess Twitter thinks only showing conversations at the beginning will increase signal:noise ratios (and/or it's less computationally-intensive, in that only a small number of tweets will require a database walk through a twitterer's follower list).

ludovicah · 5 months ago

No, people will reply to any tweet relevant or otherwise to spare themselves typing out a username

Jr Deputy Accountant · 6 months ago

Twitter mobile users for one... my entire hour long commute can be made up of catching up with what I've missed at work all day that I couldn't really get it within the acceptable scope of company social media tactics. And there is no reply button for win mobile soooo... there you go.

.M / @tasselflower · 6 months ago

Yeah, this is not exactly what anyone asked for, is it? It's kind of stupid idea, actually.

I've been thinking (trying not to twist my brain): If twitter won't fix the replies how it used to be, will the people start to work it around by adding To, Re or PR (as suggested here: http://twitter.com/RobQuigley/status/1786769403)? And won't that take then away the choice from the ones who don't want to see all the replies?

CoryOBrien · 6 months ago

You can also start any reply with a "." (For instance: .@CoryOBrien) and it will bypass the new filter, it only takes away one character, and the message will still showing up in that user's replies area on their Twitter homepage.

Miladinoski · 6 months ago

How many people knew of this exactly? I know I didn't, but thanks for telling me anyways :)

Michael Bauser · 6 months ago

If you take Twitter's "only 2% of users use that feature" number seriously, that means:

1) Only 2% of people noticed anything different, which means at most only 2% of them care that fewer people are seeing their @replies.

2) Human nature says less than 100% of the aggrieved will do anything about it.

3) So, less than 2% of Twitter's users will rebel in any visible fashion by adding stupid new reply markers to their messages.

4) The other 98% of Twitter users will probably ignore them. Or stop following them.

5) In the end, the "rebels" will probably only suceed in reducing their own follower counts.

6) I don't really feel bad about that. Do you? Didn't think so.

Sonny Gill · 6 months ago

I think it's good that they're at least listening to us now, though after a huge uproar last night. Though it may not be the fix that we're looking for, they're taking the necessary steps to get it back to where the community is happy.

I posted my thoughts last night on Twitter having their ears plugged to the community, so I do applaud them in this move that they're taking the next steps to right their wrong.

Seattle Website Design · 6 months ago

#twitter and #ducttape it's all part of the charm. Will be sad when Twitter is flawless.

Nora A Burns, SPHR · 6 months ago

Thank you for keeping us up to date -- not a fan of the "fix" AND glad to have timely information on status. @NoraBurns (not that you'll see it unless someone STARTS a post with it without having pressed "reply".....I'm just say'n)

Adam Ostrow · 6 months ago

heh, the way you say it, it does seem like a pretty confusing resolution

Mary Elizabeth · 6 months ago

Speaking of control, I want more control over what I see on my own page . . .

mike ashworth · 6 months ago

If their are some architecture / scaling issues which require significant investment to resolve perhaps everyone should pay to use the service.... or do we not love it that much?

btw your comment on twitter/facebook is interesting....

"if you’re going to remove something that people use, make sure you let them know in advance. Facebook (Facebook reviews) has learned this and now communicates most big changes far in advance.

For the average users of facebook (and I don't mean all of us tech savvy people) every change goes without prior notification/understanding.

Mike

p.s. Dont Panic!

identify_urself · 6 months ago

I think that the issue is valid but let's not forget that we are talking about a free service here. When was the last time you paid for Twitter services? Oh you haven't, ok then.

Sonny Gill · 6 months ago

There's plenty of services/sites that we use that are free of charge, but that doesn't mean that platform doesn't have a responsibility to uphold for its community.

identify_urself · 6 months ago

Of course it has a responsibility but in this society where everyone feel so entitled I think we are seriously lacking appreciation. If I was working for free for a client and they had the nerve to complain, I would no longer work for free.

Jim Roepcke · 6 months ago

replies are still gone if you actually REPLY to a tweet (using the reply arrow on the web or the reply button in a twitter client), so things are still broken in all cases where people are actually using Twitter properly.

Coralie · 6 months ago

I'm happy that at least they seem to be listening to what the users want. it's definitely a duct tape solution for now, but there's hope for a real solution.

Alonis · 6 months ago

Fail.

E Marie · 6 months ago

Interesting stuff...I am on Twitter and did not know they were taking features away.

Erin · 6 months ago

I'm sick of hearing "Quit bitching about a free service." *WE* may not pay for Twitter service but you better believe the Twitter folks are getting paid. And if they screw up the service and we stop using it - they lose money. Glad they are at least pretending to listen - but I don't think I'll hold my breath waiting for it to go back to how it was. Even though I wish it would.

CPSIA- Karen · 6 months ago

Pete, I would love for you to investigate this:

from @cpsia
@mashable Tweet posting DELAY in searches 17-35 minutes AGAIN! Twitter MUST BE tweeking to prevent SPAM ABUSE of TRENDING TOPICS. Thoughts? (posted this tweet around 7 pm EDT US.

The time delay in tweets appearing in search has been bouncing around. It was 40 minutes to 1 hour early this AM, depending on the search topic.

Then, it mysteriously, went back to tweets appearing in search within seconds!

Now, it's back to a delay when I got on Twitter this evening.

Do you think this has something to do with the @reply policy that Twitter is messing with?

Or do you think this is as I stated: an attempt by Twitter to gain some control over trending topics and minimize future "Apple Shampoo" type phenomenons as we saw a few days ago?

Tweets that aren't seen in REAL TIME in search cripple Twitter's capacity to provide a platform for conversation between non-followers. A lot of networking (and following) on any subject begins in a search.

Scott Prock · 6 months ago

I'm still not understanding this completely ... I can still see the @ replies of people I'm not following. I never used the feature to see the whole conversation so that may be why it doesn't seem any different for me.

What I'm really concerned with is all of a sudden the API calls in TweetDeck have ran out in the first 20 minutes of my account. I only have the API settings set to use 50% of my limit so why am I running out so fast.

The only conclusion I can come up with is the searches are now being counted in the API usage. You guys can have the @Repies back, just give me back searches without API usage ;-)

... Scott - @ScottPRock

William Mougayar · 6 months ago

I think that 2% are the most vocal about it, and they are the power users. They (we) are the ones setting the usage trends and are ahead of others. But this shows that Twitter has become too big to satisfy all its user base. I'm sure they thought of that dilemma internally. The wide variations in user segmentations and needs will probably dictate more knobs and dials to make it more universally pleasing.

catcubed · 6 months ago

This fix is more confusing than the original "confusing" functionality.

douglaspaul · 6 months ago

look, for me it's real simple. one of the things i do on twitter is network. i don't go searching for people to follow and i don't follow everyone who follows me. i instead follow just a few smart, insightful and informative people and then when they are talking to someone about something it's usually about something useful and interesting. i don't need to follow the other unknown person but seeing that one side of the conversation let's me know if the topic is something i want to chime in on. if it is, i'll check out the other, unknown person's profile and boom i might have just found another interesting person to follow. i've met and networked with many of my current follows in this way.

this fix however doesn't bring this back. i guess i'm a poweruser since i've been on twitter for so long but i can handle all the information. it doesn't bother me. unlike it many other areas, in technology you have to make sure you don't piss off your first/power users for the sake of the newbies because it's the powerusers who are your tech or company's evangelists.

the need to bring back the feature as it was. i don't care how long it takes but that's what they need to do FIRST and then start on that second idea. if it's not scalable then make it scalable. i'm sure this wasn't the first time they discovered it was scalable. why wasn't a real fix or a rebuild put into play then. with all that money they brought in recently it never crossed their minds to take care of this? smh!!! morons!!

Jason Wagner · 6 months ago

This is TERRIBLE.

"First, we're making a change such that any updates beginning with @username (that are not explicitly created by clicking on the reply icon) will be seen by everyone following that account. "

So basically, apps that use the the @username at the start of a tweet to programatically reply to a user are screwed? What about users who tweet via text? Are they screwed too?

What about the "98%" of users who DO NOT WANT to see @replies to people they don't know? Are these people going to get loads of extra tweets in their feed now? All so that the 2% of tweeps are happy?

Now THIS is an outrage. I'm pissed.

Christopher L. Jorgensen · 6 months ago

To all the people suggestion workarounds to this, let me point out the workaround to MySpace is called Facebook. Workarounds are worse than the problem, since now you are forcing people to see these hacked replies. And you are giving me know indication of what I should be seeing. Without the "in reply to" link, I could care less about your replies, since I can't go back and see what you are responding to.

iTbay · 6 months ago

I agree - real time reactions require pre-announced implementations! Twitter users run in real time. Since Im a fairly new twitter user, this didnt really effect me at all.

However, I like the new feature that they've stated they are working on relating to followings in terms of control. Although TweetDeck does provide some relief, more user friendly information relating to followings would be much better. I like how Twitter is stating followings since this is a driver of one's tweets; better control & use of such information will make one's tweets more substantive.

Also, I like how Twitter is moving inward in the Canadian market by reaching out to the major carriers such as Telus, Rogers and others without paying service charges. This will provide Canadians with the ability to tweet without being charged and increase more potential tweet growth and more potential ad clicks :)

@itbay

Stefano Maggi · 6 months ago

Here's what happened behind the scenes of #fixreplies http://is.gd/zIBm :)

Stephanie Booth · 6 months ago

So, basically: stop using the reply button, and type in your @replies manually.

Gah :-(

swag · 6 months ago

This is just a clear case of a new company making old PR mistakes because they're too immature to recognize the importance of the "old" business practices yet.

Maybe not as bad as Facebook's "Lord of the Flies"-like culture, but the hubris of youth is here in full display.

zimzum · 6 months ago

This is not a fix. This is irrelevant and even messes with the stream from people who had no issue before.

Then they promise something vague.

Twitter fail, indeed.

@idaAa / Ida Aalen · 6 months ago

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.

Katherine · 4 months ago

I so wish I had more control over @ replies. I follow some people who, while otherwise interesting and fun, sometimes get carried away and use Twitter as a chat room. Thus, I get 200 tweets to sort through in three hours, 75% of which are people talking to each other. I have unfollowed people when it gets out of hand, but they're people, not bots, and it hurts their feelings. Please, please, Twitter moguls, give some control back over @ replies.