Comments on: Twitter’s “Small Settings Update” Is Anything But

By: Dan

Dan — Sat, 30 May 2009 02:19:20 +0000

I think twitter has so many people used to their specific way of writing messages, it is stupid for them to change it. All it will do is confuse people, and for what benefit? I’m glad they decided not to stick with their original update… it’s one less thing I need to remember.

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 13 May 2009 08:36:26 +0000

Interesting, I can certainly see how the twitter community would be divided on this point. There are good arguments both ways. I personally don’t usually end up finding new people through fragmented conversations, but I can definitely see how some people would. I guess from a user’s standpoint I think making it a big option in the main twitter view would make sense, but whatever. Ultimately it just means that more twitter memes will develop to work around it and add to the random culture of the twitterverse

By: Al Gonzalez

Al Gonzalez — Wed, 13 May 2009 08:22:21 +0000

@AndrewO: They could have introduced a simple mode without any choices and an expert mode for those that prefer more choices.

In your case, you say you like to customize but didn’t like the results — sorry at least you have the option to fix it. With the new change I don’t like the results and can’t change it.

By: AndrewO

AndrewO — Wed, 13 May 2009 07:42:36 +0000

@Al: I think there is something to be said for streamlining options. It can simplify things both for the user and the programmer.

For my part, I was inclined to drink from the fire-hose. It never even occurred to me to turn it off and the amount of uninteresting traffic I was getting was starting to impact my enjoyment of Twitter. I don’t think having this feature on by default would have been an option either: users like to customize and tinker even if the end results are sometimes worse.

But I do see your point: once you introduce a feature, it’s hard to take it back.

By: Al Gonzalez

Al Gonzalez — Wed, 13 May 2009 07:28:20 +0000

Matt: as Allister said, there was a setting to do this anyway so why take away a feature and force users into a single way of using the twitter. Different strokes and all.

By: AndrewO

AndrewO — Wed, 13 May 2009 07:09:24 +0000

Good solution. I’m not as negative on this as you (and a lot of people) are. I think your exclamation hack combined with this behavior is a good way to control "loudness" on Twitter.

I wouldn’t even call it a hack though. Let’s not forget that "@", "OH", "RT", hash-tags, and all of the other twitterisms we use today are emergent developments. "! @foo" could be next. (Although I like "¡" a little better .

By: matt

matt — Wed, 13 May 2009 07:03:32 +0000

I like the change. Replies to people I don’t follow are conversations I don’t need to follow.

By: Allister

Allister — Wed, 13 May 2009 02:56:06 +0000

From what I’ve read on other sites, there used to be a setting to allow this behaviour anyway. Why didn’t they just promote that setting?

By: Steve Dekorte

Steve Dekorte — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:55:13 +0000

I agree.

Could this change be for those users that follow insanely large numbers of people thinking that following someone is the equivalent of friending on facebook? I can imagine them being a vocal minority.

By: knowtheory

knowtheory — Tue, 12 May 2009 23:57:35 +0000

Yeh, with Rick on this.

The other key is that you at least [b]know[/b] that a conversation is taking place, even if you can only see part of it. If you want to see the other half, you can at least find out about it then. Seeing parts of conversations are a really important way to find out what’s going on.

This is a blunder.