Update: Twitter’s Biz Stone let slip the real reason why the @reply functionality was scaled back:
The engineering team reminded me that there were serious technical reasons why that setting had to go or be entirely rebuilt—it wouldn’t have lasted long even if we thought it was the best thing ever. Nevertheless, it’s amazing to wake up and see all the tweets about this change.
We’re hearing your feedback and reading through it all. One of the strongest signals is that folks were using this setting to discover and follow new and interesting accounts—this is something we absolutely want to support. Our product, design, user experience, and technical teams have started brainstorming a way to surface a new, scalable way to address this need.
The blogosphere’s in a tizzy. Twitter decided to make a small change to how @replies work on the Web interface for Twitter:
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.
Confused? That’s understandable and exactly why we made the update.
Unfortunately, due to either willful ignorance or genuine confusion, it seems that every bit of coverage I’ve read this morning has a wildly different and new take on exactly what this means and who will see what word with an @ in front of it.
It’s pretty clear that Twitter is going to reverse this decision just to get all the uproar to die down, but in the mean time we get incredulity and anger on a comedic level.
I figured a fun morning exercise would be to go around the horn on the reactions:
Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb: He seems to fundamentally misunderstand what’s being changed, but he’s sure mad as hell about it.
“There’s no way this is going to last, I’m in shock that the policy was put in place at all.”
Jason Kinkaid at Techcrunch: He seems to have a better grasp on what’s being done, and is utterly insulted.
“Gee, thanks Twitter. I didn’t realize that an option I manually activated was undesirable. Any other things I shouldn’t like that you’d like to make me aware of?”
Charles Arthur at the UK Guardian: He believes that we’ve funamentally broken what makes Twitter a social network.
“Really, we need an anthropologist to weigh in here..”
Chris Garett at The Blog Herald: is subtle in his criticism.
“Now I am sure Twitter folks think they are doing the right thing, but it is strange they are removing features that harm nothing rather than improve the service?”
Alan Patrick at Broadstuff: finds a way to avoid using the phrase “jumping the shark.”
“It seems that there is a defining moment in every growing social network’s life, its "Friendster Moment" if you like, when it first shafts its Old Guard members in order to gain some benefit for its new joiners.”
