if i replied to these folks on twitter, you wouldn’t see it.

timoni:

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.

Nonwithstanding twitter’s decision, which though may have been researched well, was poorly communicated, this debacle reminds me as much of Amazonfail as Netflix. The bandwagon effect on twitter so far is its most frustrating ‘feature’ whereby legitimate interesting content is masked by the signal to noise ratio of a ‘trend’.  I no more want to read 20 identical me-too posts about a company’s mistake than I do last night’s Desparate Housewives episode.

A better use of twitter’s time in my opinion, is to determine better topical or hastag filters for individuals.  Brevity, one of twitter’s standout features, becomes moot when the same 140 characters are displayed 20 times on a page.

Of course, it is a two sided issue, where a portion of the blame lies with users. If what you are trying to say takes considerably more than 140 characters, write a blog post.  You can still tweet and link to it, you are then displaying a more thoughtful contribution to a conversation.

Regarding the specific decision, I find it odd twitter bucked its typical release a change to a portion of users to test the waters behavior, in exchange for a late night change with a 4 sentence (and I agree poorly-written) blog post.  Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I wonder if this change has larger performance or spam implications that made it necessary to do quick and dirty.  This is where transparency in their communication would have helped. If given the choice between the replies feature and uptime, for example, I’m sure the pitchfork-waving #fixreplies crew would prefer an available service.

Source: timoni