Yesterday the gurus behind the quick-hit social network Twitter made a "small settings update." And their user base exploded.
Here's how it worked before the change. Twitterers post simple messages, under 140 characters, which can be read by anyone following their account.
Say Bill follows Susie, but not Jim. If Susie posts:
"Heading out to bfast. Bagles rule!"
Bill would see it. If, however, she posted a reply to Jim:
"@jimfakename The Misery Mules are playing at the club 2nite, meet me!"
Bill would not see it. However, if he wanted to, Bill had the option to go into his settings and choose @allreplies, allowing him to see everything Susie posted even if it was meant for someone else. He would then know that the Mules were playing, something he might be interested in himself. He would also have a more complete snapshot of what Susie was doing or thinking.
Most Twitterers don't do this, apparently. Twitter can be a hard thing to keep up on as it is with conversations flying by, especially if you follow a lot of people who post a lot. And many users don't want to see half-conversations if they're not relevant.
Ysterday, Twitter founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams killed @replies.
Here's how it worked before the change. Twitterers post simple messages, under 140 characters, which can be read by anyone following their account.
Say Bill follows Susie, but not Jim. If Susie posts:
"Heading out to bfast. Bagles rule!"
Bill would see it. If, however, she posted a reply to Jim:
"@jimfakename The Misery Mules are playing at the club 2nite, meet me!"
Bill would not see it. However, if he wanted to, Bill had the option to go into his settings and choose @allreplies, allowing him to see everything Susie posted even if it was meant for someone else. He would then know that the Mules were playing, something he might be interested in himself. He would also have a more complete snapshot of what Susie was doing or thinking.
Most Twitterers don't do this, apparently. Twitter can be a hard thing to keep up on as it is with conversations flying by, especially if you follow a lot of people who post a lot. And many users don't want to see half-conversations if they're not relevant.
Ysterday, Twitter founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams killed @replies.
We've updated the Notices section of Settings to better reflect how folks are using Twitter regarding replies. Based on usage patterns and feedback, we've learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow--it's a good way to stay in the loop. However, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don't follow in your timeline is undesirable. Today's update removes this undesirable and confusing option.Only, funny thing? Turns out it was a desirable option. Since then Twitter users have been flooding the service with complaints tagged with #fixreplies and #twitterfail, and they're not happy at being told how they should use Twitter.
@scotthepburn OMG! I'm in a bar and can only hear conversations between people I know! It's so quiet! This place is lame...I'm leaving.Seeing a reply to someone else can often answer a question you hadn't asked, or alert you to a person you didn't know was on Twitter, or just make you laugh. It was like being at a party, where you might overhear snippets of interesting conversation or outrageous reponses. Authors like @neilgaiman and @warrenellis and actors like @stephenfry and @wilw often answer questions through their Twitter accounts which all of their followers could see and benefit from. Now we're all in a question and answer panel audience session where the speaker runs down every time and whispers the answer only into the questioner's ear. Interesting topics won't flow as quickly. It'll be harder to stumble onto interesting.
@mrch0mp3rs Jumping into or learning from others' conversations is what made me <3 Twitter. #fixreplies #twitterfail
@mariancall The point: we should have choice. We all use @Twitter differently. Users are smart; give them a few simple options. #fixreplies
@acarvin The no.1 reason people tell me they quit twitter is because they can't find interesting conversations - worse now #fixreplies
I had my @allreplies turned on from day one and not having it now makes Twitter much less useful or fun for me. A social service based on communication has just made it more difficult to communicate.
What I don't understand is, why do this? If @allreplies bothered you it could easily be turned off, was in fact off by default, so why take it away from the people who do like it? Does it save on server load? Have some of the newly arrived heavy-hitter celebrity Twitterers complained about it? (I'm looking at you, @oprah) The only word from Twitter is that it was "undesirable." I don't think this word means what they think it means.
Evan Williams tweeted "Reading people's thoughts on the replies issue. We're considering alternatives. Thanks for your feedback." Well, one alternative might be to make an Expert or Advanced tab in Settings, where power users can specify exactly what level of replies they do and don't want.
Or they could just rollback to the previous version and accept that it was a mistake.
Granted, Twitter is a free service and they are welcome to run it however they see fit. And, of course, we are welcome to not use it if it doesn't meet our needs, as evidenced by the fact reported recently that 60% of Twitter users quit after a month and don't return. But as Stone and Williams should have learned from the user backlash every time Facebook makes an ill-considered change, social networks survive on the users and on word-of-mouth.
And when you've got a network designed to let millions of people communicate quickly back and forth across the world, it's not a good idea to give them something to complain about.
UPDATE: Twitter is listening, looks like. Now they're blaming it on tech problems, which weren't mentioned in the initial announcement. Had they said that in the beginning instead of assuring us that we really wanted them to cripple the service, they might have avoided a lot of this. Corporate heads, we prefer it when you're honest with us. Seriously.
