Archives for May 13, 2009

In what Twitter has referred to as a a “small settings update” loads of Twitter users are up in arms. An interesting uprising has started today on Twitter, much thanks to a piece on Mashable that seems to have broken the story. At the heart of matters are some planned changes by Twitter that will restrict who can see what.

As reported in this article the following is what’s up… “Twitter has determined that the options for whose replies you see on the service were too confusing. Rather than simply hide this advanced feature for the 2% of users who utilize it, Twitter has decided to turn it off completely.”

Here’s the skinny… prior to recently users had several options for setting how @replies were handled. Options included:
viewing @replies from nobody
viewing @replies from everybody
or viewing only the @replies of people you were following
In plain English… no more half conversations!

With the new update, there’s only the last option available. Big deal you might think.. well, given that Twitter is a “social” service it really is all about people and connecting with people (and companies and brands etc…) this latest move will really put a damper on how you can locate people and perhaps most important, see who’s talking about you or trying to get your attention. Case in point… maybe I wrote an article about your application or service. I then Tweeted about it and mentioned your company twitter using the @reply within the tweet… now you’ll never know that I mentioned you. For publishers like me who tweet a fair bit, I’ll now not notice when people retweet (RT) something of interest that might contacting an @reply with my Twitter name (unless I already follow the person). Simply put, it really does restrict how we can grow our network… myself, I like connecting with people who share an interest in what I discuss or with people who mention me.

Twitter users are now up-in-arms and organizing their efforts with the #fixreplies hashtag – If this latest move pisses you off you search out the following and RT accordingly!