Twitter users ticked off over feed settings tweak
(Credit:
Twitter, screenshot by Anthony de Rosa (soupsoup.tumblr.com))
Twitter has made a small update that's left many avid users scratching their heads--to put it lightly.
A post on the Twitter blog explains the situation. Previously, Twitter users had been able to choose between two settings for viewing the feed of accounts that they follow: to turn on "@-replies" from members whom they follow directed to members whom they don't follow, or to leave those off and hence see fewer "tweets" that may not be relevant to them personally.
So, if I follow Twitter user @rafe, but I don't follow Twitter user @josh (sorry, dude), and I selected the second option in my Twitter settings, it would not show up in my Twitter homepage feed if @rafe posted a tweet that said "@josh: Why did you eat all that pizza I ordered?"
Now Twitter has opted to stop giving users the choice, and is automatically not displaying @-replies directed to people you don't follow. You can still see them on individual members' profiles, but they don't come to your attention in your main Twitter feed.
Twitter called this a "small settings update" on Tuesday, and explained that "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."
But many active Twitter users have retorted that seeing replies sent to people they don't follow is a way that they meet new contacts on the microblogging service--and that Twitter is effectively blocking communication. None too pleased, they've set up a hashtag (Twitter's equivalent of a keyword) called "#fixreplies" to further the conversation on Twitter.
On Wednesday morning, "#fixreplies" was the top "trending topic" on Twitter, and new Twitter Search results for the term are coming in by the dozen.
User revolts are common on popular social networks--just look at the Digg DMCA snafu or pretty much any Facebook redesign--but this is the first time that Twitter has had to deal with a big one. And it's in a difficult spot right now.
Traffic has exploded recently in the wake of an Oprah Winfrey seal of approval (among other things), but these millions of new users aren't loyalists yet. There are already signs that Twitter users may be even more fickle than the average social-network member. A small move to tick them off could be a serious blow to the service.
It'll be interesting to see how Twitter handles this one.
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
Al
Last line
Its They've not hey've. Just a bit of correcting thats all.
I agree with the adegutis. Twitter should have just left it that way or at the bottom of the feed given a radio button with the two options to switch between feeds.
It's "It's" not "Its". Just a bit of correcting of your correcting, is all. :)
PS: It's also "that's" not "thats." ;)
in regards to this topic, I have no clue, twitter is a service that has always confused
me to begin with. How do you guys learn all those codes on twitter anyway?
I've been with them for over a year, and to me, twitter seems to be no more then
a status updater to me, not real useful. how on earth do you guys "follow" people
on twitter and all that? nobody ever taught me any of those special codes, and i know
the site doesn't talk about them anywhere *shrugs*
Sounds like someone wanted to justify their department's staffing, so they had a 'good idea' they could implement.
"Spotting new folks in tweets is an interesting way to check out new profiles and find new people to follow. Despite this update, you'll still see mentions or references linking to people you don't follow. For example, you'll continue to see, "Ev meeting with @biz about work stuff" even if you don't follow @biz. We'll be introducing better ways to discover and follow interesting accounts as we release more features in this space."
"Spotting new folks in tweets is an interesting way to check out new profiles and find new people to follow. Despite this update, you'll still see mentions or references linking to people you don't follow. For example, you'll continue to see, "Ev meeting with @biz about work stuff" even if you don't follow @biz. We'll be introducing better ways to discover and follow interesting accounts as we release more features in this space."
And I wanted to add, I agree with the change. I'm not really a hard-core twitter user, but I recall getting confused the other day when I saw someone I follow respond to something someone I don't follow said. I wanted to see what their original comment was, so I could understand the response, but that proved difficult and confusing. It would be much clearer to not show what really amounts to a private message between two users unless I follow both of them already.
- by May 22, 2009 2:05 PM PDT
- While "discovering new people" is part of it. It's also about knowing what my friends (the people I follow) are motivated by, what they like to talk about - what inspires them to post a reply.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(16 Comments)These are people I follow and these tweets are in the public stream. What would they not be included in what I see?
What absurd about this is, if I don't want to see certain tweets, I can filter them in my client. But in this case, I can't filter because Twitter has already removed these tweets (posted by people I follow) - now I have to go looking for them.
I build this workaround hack to do just that, to show the tweets Twitter excluded from your feed: http://mrblog.org/whatumissed.html