Comments on: Twitter’s @Reply change sparks a revolt. Is Big Twitter watching?

By: Is Twitter opening a can of worms with the RT change? — Danny Whatmough.com

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:36:25 +0000

[...] 2009, Twitter made a subtle change to the way replies show up in your Twitter stream. There was a huge backlash initially to the move, but this soon abated and today, we still quite happily use [...]

By: James Cherkoff

James Cherkoff — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:58:01 +0000

Strangely the @all replies still works on Twitter feeds published into FriendFeed.

By: Lisa Devaney

Lisa Devaney — Wed, 13 May 2009 21:57:07 +0000

I probably wouldn’t be following @mikebutcher if I didn’t see you reply to someone else I was following. Hope Twitter goes back to the old way, like the discovery process of it all.

By: Liz

Liz — Wed, 13 May 2009 21:06:45 +0000

Latest blog entry about this from @biz: http://blog.twitter.com/2009/05/we-learned-lot.html

By: Liz

Liz — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:58:48 +0000

I’m becoming doubtful about what a technological hurdle this setting really was especially considering that Twitter is in the process of adding in more features.

More people are protesting this than those who actually chose this setting because it was one of the few ways you could exercise some control on Twitter which is pretty inflexible. Taking away the ability to choose what you receive is more infuriating than Twitter lacking certain features.

I think Twitter’s creators want it to be as ubiquitous and functional as plumbing. And it’s going to be just as exciting.

By: Offbeatmammal

Offbeatmammal — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:09:30 +0000

really seems like something they should leave to use choice.

I’ve discovered some great folks on twitter by curiously following an @reply and being delighted with what I found

I’d like to see an option to hide @replies to people who block their tweets so you won’t be able to see them (or at least get a warning) as that bugs me

By: Simon Sanders

Simon Sanders — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:22:40 +0000

Agree. Why not just give people the choice to either opt-in to the ’serendipitous delight’ of it all – or opt-out of what might be seen as irrelevant channel noise. I don’t think many users bothered checking that they could have opted-out of @replies to ‘random’ people – but that’s not hard to correct with a “TIP: did you know etc” type message. Anyway just because some people don’t RTFM is no reason to dull down the features…

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:21:14 +0000

I suppose I meant [traffic] in terms of less data going to less feeds. What other reason could they have for removing what was already an optional feature?

By: Andy Lawless

Andy Lawless — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:17:42 +0000

Do you really think it will affect traffic though? Despite the fact that twitter users are up in arms about the changes, I’d hazard a guess that it won’t have any significant impact on the number of people who stay faithful to the system.

Are there any figures/estimates about users abandoning facebook after their recent much-criticised changes, for example?

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:08:24 +0000

I agree that users should have the choice, although personally I never used this noisy feature.

Did they do this to cut down on their traffic? Its fairly obvious that Twitter can barely handle its own load.

By: Jonathan Hopkins

Jonathan Hopkins — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:07:30 +0000

Nice post Mike. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with the last sentence. There’s definitely a feeling of ownership there from the Twitter community and people feel like hey should be part of the decision. I know I keep banging on about it – but whilst asking us about details like this, Twitter should also just ask us if we would be willing to pay too. They might be surprised . . .

By: Andrew Chalkley

Andrew Chalkley — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:00:29 +0000

@replies were created by the community – it evolved out of it.

They committed genocide!