So, this morning – like the rest of the twitterverse – I logged on and saw the announcement that there had been a “Small Settings Update” and that this affected @replies.
There seemed to be a bit of confusion as to HOW this affected us all, although we knew it would. It didn’t take long though for the hashtag to arrive, and it was #FixReplies. This was different to any of the myriad ‘bring back the old Facebook‘ petitions, unlike Facebook, twitter changed a fundamental part of the social networking side. It would be like taking away the “People you may know” feature from Facebook.
Eventually, twitter realised that there was a problem and thanked the community for the feedback, and it seemed that the only thing that was getting through as being worrying was that people use the unshared @reply to find other new tweeps to follow. Of course that was a concern, but I had a thought…
One of the big conversations about twitter around the net at the moment is whether it will replace Google. To do this twitter HAS to allow information to flow freely around the twitterverse, and this new “feature” doesn’t allow it.
As an example, I follow @BullyingUK, an excellent support resource (and yes that was a shameless plug!). Now imagine @BullyingVictim sends a message to @BullyingUK asking for a telephone number he could call for help.
Using the old system, @BullyingUK could hit the reply button and say “@BullyingVictim Call your local helpline on 12345678.” And anyone following @BullyingUK could see it. Under the new system you would need to follow both @BullyingUK and @BullyingVictim to get the update.
Now imagine you’re a worried, shy person who needs that number but daren’t ask and you don’t know @BullyingVictim. You won’t see either tweet. The new system doesn’t work.
As I was heading home from work earlier however I saw a link to a final post from @Biz that said it wasn’t a new feature, but something that the system couldn’t do any more. But it’s a key part of what makes twitter work, and the team need to remember this.
They’ve said the way around it is to type your @reply instead of using the reply button. Isn’t that great – especially after reports that show 60% of twitter users don’t get it and quit within a month – twitter decides to make the site even less user friendly!
