Or... Never Underestimate the Backlash of a "Small Settings Update"
Yesterday Twitter made an unexpected, unwelcome and vastly unappreciated change to the way "@reply" tweets are delivered to users. Until yesterday, I could view my Twitter friends' replies to users we don't mutually follow. Until yesterday, I could turn that feature option on or off in my user settings. Today, however, I have no choice in the matter. Twitter killed the option, calling it "undesirable and confusing".
I find their reasoning curious, since (if I remember correctly) the user settings had this feature turned off by default. For those Twitter users who turned the option on, it was desirable and useful, and made perfect sense. Twitter has shot themselves, along with their claim to value the "importance of discovery", in the foot.
In a "real life" scenario, it would be like going to my favorite cafe for a meetup with a common-interest group, some folks with whom I am acquainted and others with whom I am not. Throughout the conversations are dead spots... any time someone I know replies to someone I don't know I find myself unable to hear my friend speak. I would love to get to know the friends of my friends, but I am not allowed to hear their conversations. Now that is what I would consider "undesirable and confusing"!
Many Twitter users have already discovered and implemented a (kludgy, but do-able) workaround by prepending a single character to the @reply in their tweets. This will work to allow @reply tweets to be seen by all friends, but the loss now will be for the users who once disabled @replies to non-friends. They will have to choose between enduring these tweets or unfollowing their friends. Not only that, these @replies will truly be "one-sided fragments" because there will be no refering link to the original tweet. Nobody wins.
The Value of Discovery
The ability to discover new Twitter users to follow is, for me, among the most highly valued Twitter features. Seeing my Twitter friends' interesting replies to users I have not yet met allows me the option of learning more about those users and potentially making new connections. This method of discovery has afforded me some wonderful Twitter friends and contacts I would surely have never met otherwise. The result is a richer community experience.
I am extremely disappointed in the decision of the Twitter powers that be to make this change without, it would seem, becoming better informed as to the potential impact on its users. Not only did they act in a short-sighted way, they acted with presumption that they know better than their users what their users want. I only hope they will hear and honor the many users who have made Twitter the great social media community that it is and return this feature quickly until they are ready to implement a better alternative that serves everyone.
Related Twitter Searches: #fixreplies #twitterfail
[Twitter Responds: Whoa, Feedback! / We Learned A Lot]
Update: Thank you, Twitter Team, for hearing your users' feedback. Even so, I would have liked to see you kick the integrity up a notch by foregoing the CYA campaign and just being transparent from the start. While I am not completely thrilled with your interim solution, I am grateful for it and looking forward to your promised feature improvements which will hopefully satisfy everyone.
[cross-posted from geekmum.com]
