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Oh Twitter… Please #fixreplies

In what has been dubbed “the dumbest move Twitter has ever made”, Twitter made a “small settings update” that turns out to not be so small after all, and has the Twitter community up in arms.

Their blog post doesn’t even hint at the gravity of the change. They took away people’s ability to choose what they saw. So really, they made things worse for everybody.

One of their reasons was that only 2% of their users were opting to view @replies to people that they weren’t following. I admit- most of the time I had the feature turned off. But I’m still mad that they took it, and here’s a few reasons why.

1: I did occasionally go in and turn on @replies to people I didn’t follow, because it was a good way to find new, interesting people. This is why the 2% that had it on did so, I assume. It was nice to be able to pick and choose when I saw those replies.

2: So, when the ability to choose was turned off, people started mangling their replies by starting them with other symbols before the @reply, which forced it on my FL. Ok.. so, by taking away my ability to turn off @replies to people I didn’t follow, I’m actually now BEING FORCED to see them because everybody is dodging the filter. Thanks, Twitter.

3: I hate being given the ability to choose, then have it taken away because “big brother knows what’s best for you.” Yeah. Bite me.

So Twitter has now “reversed the settings change”, except for the part where they only show up if they’re not actually replies. O…k… question! How many of those @replies are not replies? Doesn’t that take away the whole “reply” part of it? Isn’t it then a “mention” which Twitter just recently added that confuses a lot of people? Oh wait. That’s the best part about this whole thing. Apparently Twitter took it off because “it was confusing”.

The whole thing is dumb. Every day I find myself wishing more and more that Google had bought Twitter instead of Jaiku. Twitter shot themselves in the foot with this one- could this be the beginning of the end?

6 Comments

  1. cybrpunk
    cybrpunk May 14, 2009

    I never even knew there were options in Twitter so no difference to me.

  2. Hope
    Hope May 14, 2009

    Google does do a good job of not breaking things…

    I haven’t been on Twitter long enough (nor do I use it enough) to really have an opinion on the matter, though their blog post about it does seem a little condescending.. and taking away choice is usually a bad move.

  3. Jules
    Jules May 16, 2009

    It is kind of lame… what needs to be “scalable” about it, anyway?

  4. Bobby McGee
    Bobby McGee Jun 7, 2009

    I agree wholeheartedly about this. I find lots of cool people via @replies.

  5. Melissa
    Melissa Jun 16, 2009

    how have I not commented on this yet? *ponders*

    I don’t like the changes twitter put into place but i don’t really pay enough attention to twitter for it to actually bother me. I’m much more a plurk girl than a twitter one so kudos to that!

  6. Amoureuse
    Amoureuse Jul 13, 2009

    Twitter chooses whats better for us and do changes, it makes me mad. Sometimes the change is useful but i need time to get used to it. Would be better if we can choose whatever to change or not.

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