Twitter Changes @replies; Users Up In Arms

twitter_logo_headerToday’s Twitter controversy is the decision to remove @replies directed at users you don’t follow from your timeline. According to Twitter, “receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don’t follow in your timeline is undesirable.” This move — which has caused quite an uproar among users — means that one of the most useful features of Twitter, namely the ability to discover interesting people from conversation fragments, has been torpedoed. Although you’re still able to see tweets mentioning other users you don’t follow (including retweets), direct replies don’t show up, so you won’t see conversations between people you follow and those you don’t.

Curiously, Twitter apparently used to offer the ability to remove “one-sided fragments” as an option in settings. Given the uproar following the change, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was reinstated, or that an option to restore the original way @replies were handled was added to Twitter’s settings page.

What do you think of the change to @replies?

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