DISQUS

culturekitchen: Dear @ev and @biz: You've killed Twitter's incredibly useful and powerful "Cocktail Party Effect"

  • baratunde · 7 months ago
    Well said Ms. Blogdiva. I did come across a the case of @acasalena who is really worried that all his reply behavior turns off his followers. He wants to control "how people interpret his presence." Never heard the tweeter wanted to control. was interesting.

    my main beef is all that you've said, however, and the fact that it's arrogant, patronizing and small minded. these @ replies "are undesirable." You know what's undesirable? fail whales. spam. zombie accounts. fake celebrity accounts. search that only indexes about four weeks. inability to download my tweets. lack of support for mentions notifications via SMS. remember the track feature??

    twitter has many larger problems that more people can agree upon. this was not a globally recognized problem. instead of giving users a choice, twitter got all Big Brother or #BigTwitter as I've said, and made the decision for us.

    different strokes for different folks. that's all i'm saying. that and twitter hates freedom. and babies.
  • Michael J. Pratt · 7 months ago
    Baratunde - Excellent points. But id @acasalena is worried about turning off his followers with his reply behavior then, perhaps, he should look at his own behavior. The beauty of Twitter is in the purely democratic effect that his followers can simply unfollow if they are annoyed by his behavior. Does he believe that if he removes all the @'s then they will all of a sudden consider the remainder of his tweets as "value added" ?

    ps I hope they implement all of you suggestions!
  • baratunde · 7 months ago
    agree 100% michael.

    i tweeted something much shorter last night.

    if people don't like m tweets, don't follow me on twitter. that's how it
    works!
  • pyrmontvillage · 7 months ago
    Well Said. Stupid does not even begin to describe such an Abomination.
  • oriste · 7 months ago
    Great job in laying it out in so much detail! I was so furious when I saw this one-liner in the Twitter web interface and then went to read their explanation. Patronizing!
  • TheSoMeEx · 7 months ago
    Logging in this morning to find this travesty has me truly annoyed. Some of my favorite conversations have been a result of reading @replies between someone I follow and someone I don't.

    Not only have I found interesting people to follow that way, I have joined group conversations about topics ranging from the philosophical to fun and obscure.

    *shakes head*

    I'm extremely disappointed.
  • kindredvampyre · 7 months ago
    RT BeRizzo: The 2 best posts I've seen re: this huge #fixreplies mistake are http://is.gd/zovU and http://is.gd/znv9 (via @MuscleNerd)

    http://culturekitchen.com/liza/blog/dear_ev_and...

    http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/12/twitter-de...
  • Angus Johnston · 7 months ago
    Well put all around.

    I'm really curious as to what fraction of Twitter users had the @ function turned on, and what fraction of power users. If my guesses as to those numbers (small and large, respectively) are right, this decision makes even less sense than it appears to on the surface.

    (I'm @studentactivism, by the way.)
  • Anon · 7 months ago
    I work for a large company that has been working with Twitter on some beta features (which is why I must post this anonymously). And I have to say, I have been astonished by how little the folks at Twitter understand Twitter - it's as though they have never used it themselves, or probably more accurately, they use it in a way the rest of us do not. They would do well to bring in some fresh blood, either as new hires or as evangelists/consultants, from the ranks of "regular users."
  • geechee_girl · 7 months ago
    Very well written post on a topic that has consumed much of my brain space and social capitol over the last few hours. I'm in high dudgeon over this and hope they rectify the situation the created back to former settings IMMEDIATELY.
  • matthewmilam · 7 months ago
    This update that Twitter has done is kind of a mirror to the complications human beings have with each other when it comes to Communication. We want to talk to each other, but we want to control how the conversation goes. We want to know what each others thinking, but we want to know that what another person thinks is EXACTLY like how we think. The update kinda says ""Your thoughts are not worthy of my eyes".

    If that makes sense.
  • matthewmilam · 7 months ago
    BTW, I'm chicaretaker (formerly matthewmilam5) on twitter if you want to follow me back.