Whitney Hess, UX Coach - Latest Comments in Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

Santorum Durbin Amendment — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 02:44:34 -0000

Howdy! I could have sworn I've visited this website before but after looking at a few of the articles I realized it's new
to me. Nonetheless, I'm definitely pleased I came across it and I'll be book-marking it and
checking back often!

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

ravm — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:03:17 -0000

Nice post. Thanks for sharing, Victoria. What a great way to use this new feature!

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

Victoria — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:18:55 -0000

I just read this article about Twitter's change and thought you might be interested in it. http://lauraminer.com/post/...

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

Orian Marx — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:38:08 -0000

As it turns out, it *was* an engineering problem concealed as a UX problem. That's pretty lame but not surprising. @Spidermint and I were right on the mark:

http://blog.twitter.com/200...
http://blog.twitter.com/200...

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

ebuie — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:21:27 -0000

This change was the first time I realized that this had an option, but it is something I had been wishing for for some time. Now that I know I used to have the option, I want it back.

Dear Twitter, if an option is confusing, the solution is to redesign the interaction or explain the option better. Yanking it is not the answer.

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

Walt Ribeiro — Wed, 13 May 2009 16:02:05 -0000

This is the dumbest thing. Ever. All your friends were strangers at one point - and to exclude strangers from meeting and connecting in the first place (just because they don't follow each other) it defeats everything that makes Twitter (and relationships) work.

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

lwcavallucci — Wed, 13 May 2009 15:44:15 -0000

Being able to see who my friends are talking to is the key to how I have developed such an incredible base of people who all add a great deal of worth to both my Twitter stream and to my life. This is an important feature. Please bring it back.

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

Soo — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:45:46 -0000

Nothing new to add, but you have my support! that was a great way to meet new people!

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

devinganger — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:44:35 -0000

What about:

Funniest thing from @orian: he values my advice!

vs.

@orian just told me the funniest thing...

Also has the virtue of being shorter, leaving more chars for the content.

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

Jay Fanelli — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:12:07 -0000

Not to pimp my own Twitter feed, but apparently the chances of you ever seeing this tweet are now severely diminished:

"If I wanted to only talk to people I already knew, I wouldn't need @Twitter in the first place. #fixreplies"

http://twitter.com/jayfanel...

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

Todd — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:59:31 -0000

Saying that this was a bad idea would be a gross understatement. Twitter has severely reduced the effectiveness of their service by removing this feature.

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

Orian Marx — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:50:22 -0000

@spidermint that is exactly what I was thinking. Most likely the feature is "undesirable" from a technical standpoint and is simply being concealed as undesirable from a user feature standpoint. The alternative to cross checking would be to make all accounts receive all @ replies all the time, and perhaps leave it to clients like TweetDeck to filter locally if the user chooses. The problem with this is, given that the default option was to not view @ replies to people you don't follow, switching to "all @ replies all the time" might be a huge server-side burden in and of itself.

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

philbaumann — Wed, 13 May 2009 12:28:01 -0000

It's perhaps the dumbest thing Twitter's done.

I'm wondering now: does @Twitter actually understand Twitter? Does the team "get" Twitter. Hard to believe; kinda ironic if true.

If I were one of the VCs who invested in Twitter, I'd be holding a sit-down with the team.

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

@lorynx — Wed, 13 May 2009 10:45:38 -0000

That's insane!!!

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

@Spidermint — Wed, 13 May 2009 10:20:37 -0000

ok, I'm going to be cynical here (forget usage patterns, blah blah blah)

Cutting out the @all at replies option will reduce twitters server load significantly!

Now I am not familiar with the Twitter database structure but I know that cutting an option like the @all reply will significantly reduce the calls the servers need to make per tweet per second. From now on the servers don't have to cross check users account to see if they have this option selected. This would have been painful for the server load before, because regardless as to whether you had changed this option or not, the server scripts would still have to have checked it.

With users on the increase and money coming in at a minimum as CEO I would certainly be looking for ways to keep the service up an running without buying another tower block of servers?

Sorry for getting a lit bit geeky. Anyway, I'm sure providing the best service comes way before profit and loss margins. I mean who would have thought a company trying to make money would have any ulterior motives!? ;0)

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

Kate — Wed, 13 May 2009 10:04:12 -0000

I hate it! It's completely removed the social aspect of Twitter. A significant number of the people I am following, I found because I could see other people's @replies. Plus, most of the people I interact with post more replies than updates, so I'm only seeing a fraction of their tweets, which makes Twitter very boring.

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

cchastain — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:42:01 -0000

Twitters removal of open @replies is tantamount to a complete lack of faith AND a complete misunderstanding of their users. Get a clue @ev @biz.

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

A.J. Kandy — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:36:46 -0000

It's definitely a desirable feature. But let's just say this -- there are alternatives like identi.ca (run by Evan Prodromou of Wikitravel), itself based on the open-source Laconica. If the Twitter peeps don't restore the proper behaviour, at least as an 'expert user' setting, why don't we all just move en masse?

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

missmotorcade — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:35:54 -0000

thanks, whitney - excellent post on an epic twitter #fail - like you, i use the @ replies to add new users to my stream and see how and why others are interacting with people i follow. this change makes absolutely no sense, and i hope that @ev, @biz and everyone else @ twitter get the memo and restore the original functionality.

mike pratt: over under is five business days.

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

Chad M — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:28:38 -0000

Twitter says they have removed this behavior because it is "not desirable". Users can decide if they desire it or not by turning it off if they don't like it. Please, listen to your users. It is clearly desirable.

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

Miguel Rodriguez — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:26:53 -0000

I agree Whitney, not sure why the heck they would remove a feature that facilitates discovery.

Twitter, please restore this feature.

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

Michael J. Pratt — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:24:17 -0000

This one is so obvious, I feel I can't add anything to all the wonderful comments you have received so I will say this:

Clearly this is a MONSTER topic on Twitter (see #fixreplies) so let's turn it into an experiment on how effective Twitter can be as a force of change (or perhaps how bullheaded @ev and @biz can be in their new celebrity)

Who wants to make odds on when it gets fixed?

On a side note: (not data supported) I would think that (for now) the majority of Twitter traffic emanates from the US. So why on earth would Twitter take down the service at noon pacific time for 1 hr as opposed to, say 3am?

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

sloped — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:22:41 -0000

Completely agree. Twitter removed an option because they didn't want to rewrite poor documentation. I'm sure most of you knew what the options meant, but if you look at them from a new users perspective it is a little confusing. Twitter just needed better documentation and instead of sitting down to do the work they just deleted the option all together.

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

texburgher — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:18:27 -0000

This was obviously a very poorly considered decision. Extensively considered? Maybe. But intelligently so? No.

Particularly sad for me, since a few months ago I suggested what I humbly believed to be an enhancement to this setting - allowing users granular control over which users they receive @messages from - only to hear from Alex that the suggestion was a feature best left for development by the 3rd party app community. This makes all sorts of faulty user assumptions, and the underlying lack of insight has now manifested in this new @messages change.

Twitter guys: It's a terrible change. And in general, you're misunderstanding and devaluing one of Twitter's key draws (that it is usable via multiple entry points, from SMS to various API consumer apps, to the twitter.com website itself) by pushing feature development responsibilities out to app development communities.

Re: Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings

Jason Wishard — Wed, 13 May 2009 08:52:26 -0000

Twitters UX was always kind of "meh", but it has been cope-able since I began using it a couple of years ago. I thought they hired a UX person. If so, they need to rethink either who they hired or what their users want. The problem with Twitter is it has become too big for it's own good. The data is so rich now that the simple interface and data filtering points aren't cutting it anymore. Hashtags are a move in the right direction, but with all of the data out there to be had on Twitter, users need better filtering, and by just getting rid of a setting, they have only hindered their growth. Is this a quick test to see reaction? Not really an A/B test, but a "switch it off, gauge reaction and flip it back on?"

And as Wendy pointed out, people take my Twitter name and not only misspell it, but do it on purpose. I'm @periodicdesign, but people will use @periodicmoviegoer or @periodictraveler. When people ask, "why didn't you respond to my tweet?," I say, "What tweet?!" I don't call them by a different name, I use their name. If your name is John, I don't call you Bob.