Twitter listened to today’s uproar and has instituted a change. So, hurrah for Twitter for responding to user feedback. I truly appreciate that. And I also realize that Twitter is a free service. Really, I shouldn’t be complaining too much – at least not until I have to pay for my tweeting privileges.
That said, does this make sense?
So here’s what we’re planning to do. First, we’re making a change such that any updates beginning with @username (that are not explicitly created by clicking on the reply icon) will be seen by everyone following that account. This will bring back some serendipity and discovery and we can do this very soon.
See, it was just easier to paste in their words. As far as I can tell, and I’ve had to re-read it a few times, they’re bringing back the feature, sort of. I can now see any tweet from @twitterX to @twitterY (see earlier examples), as long as they are not created using the Reply button. It’s kind of a WTF moment where you don’t know whether to be happy they brought it back or baffled at the way in which it was returned.
I can’t help but wonder how this affects third-party tools. If I use the Reply button in Seesmic Desktop or Tweetie, is that the same as the Reply button in Twitter.com? Please note that this policy is now there for everyone, including people who had originally opted out of it. ReadWriteWeb has a brilliant chart trying to explain it all.
Now, Twitter is working on a better solution. According to their post, they have “started designing a new feature which will give folks far more control over what they see from the accounts they follow.” Happily this will be an individual user setting (again), and maybe it will come with a bit more explanation (again, see previous rant).
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Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
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