Daily Dose of Common Sense

Yesterday, Twitter announced a major change in the way information is exchanged with its users. You will no longer see messages from people you follow if the person they messaging is not in your network. For example, if I follow @Oprah and she sends a message to @userIdontfollow, I won’t see that message in my timeline.

The Twitter-verse is agog over this change, which was previously a user setting preference. Since most Twitterers find other users through those they follow, this will seriously change the way a lot of people use the site. Part of the fun of Twitter is being able to eavesdrop on other conversations, even if you aren’t part of the thread. Doing so leads to the discovery of other voices and opinions, and a widening of our social circle.

Twitter calls this a “small settings update” that corrects a “undesirable and confusing” option. Either they have misjudged the way people interact on the site (unlikely) or perhaps there is another reason to choke off the free-flow of information. Many are suggesting that @replies will become a paid service. (We all know Twitter isn’t making money yet.)

Facebook really upset a lot of their core users in the most recent redesign where they tried to emulate…Twitter. The anti-redesign groups immediately sprang up all over Facebook in protest. The largest, “We Hate The New Facebook, so STOP CHANGING IT!!!” currently has 1,583,220 members. For me, Facebook definitely jumped the shark after the last redesign. My zeal for the site waned and I spend less time there. Too bad Twitter didn’t learn from Facebook’s mistake.

To complain about @replies, go here, or tweet using the hashtag “#fixreplies”.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 7:32 am and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.