Comments on: Twitter users ticked off over feed settings tweak

Active users complain that a change to how "tweets" are displayed is effectively blocking conversation. This could be Twitter's first large-scale user revolt.

[adegutis]

I believe Twitter is trying to stave off a problem where spammers can take advantage of sending @reply messages into people's Twitter stream without following them. Good intentions, horrible execution.

Al

[zcollvee]

Paragraph 6
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.

[n3td3v]

Privacy vs Openness.

[aMUSICsite]

Fixes one of the big things I did not like about Twitter. Thumbs up from me.

[m.meister]

You do realize that you could *turn off* that functionality before. Now, there is *no choice*.

[-Oneota-]

@zcollvee:

It's "It's" not "Its". Just a bit of correcting of your correcting, is all. :)

PS: It's also "that's" not "thats." ;)

[bubazoo]

@Oneota who made you English Teacher?

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*

[mike_ekim]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

Sounds like someone wanted to justify their department's staffing, so they had a 'good idea' they could implement.

[bubazoo]

@mike_ekim true in this case, but not all cases. Like that one guy said, you could always turn it off, now u have no choice. The problem is, some people have a different definition of what is "broke" and what isn't. if its an improvement then another option can always be added, but options taken away is never a good thing, you can never have enough options IMHO.

[Finden_Lake]

The good people at Twitter aren't that stupid, as adegutis says it's probably based on good intentions, so they'll likely revert back to the old system based on the reaction. For me this isn't even in the same league as the Facebook terms of service problem.

[Ezravision]

I requested the option to not see @replies from people i do know directed at people i don't follow. I just stopped following some good friends because they would have two status updates in a day, but 40-50 @replies commenting on everything their other friends i did not know said. I guess I can follow a lot more people now. I am glad that I am not the only one to express this as a concern. This adversely affects the new user more than inconveniences the power users, because they have Tweetdeck and other saved search options to gather more content to fill their screen. I like the option of a default setting, and an option to turn that on for friend collecting if that is what you are into. I use twitter on my iPhone with SMS, so i don't want to be interrupted 8 or more times an hour unless there it is from 8 friends posting simultaneously by coincidence.

[dracoaffectus]

I think the all those people complaining should just be patient. The Twitter Blog (that this article links to) indicates that Twitter anticipated the users concerns about discovering new people and has something up their sleeve that will (hopefully) satisfy those users.


"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."

[dracoaffectus]

I think the all those people complaining should just be patient. The Twitter Blog (that this article links to) indicates that Twitter anticipated the users concerns about discovering new people and has something up their sleeve that will (hopefully) satisfy those users.


"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."

[dracoaffectus]

Sorry for the double post.

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.

[Harrison912]

Me too, Caroline. I'm using Twitter mainly for social marketing of my safety and security web site so I'm always interested in any changes going on there. Thanks for the report.

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.

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