I am a Web Designer

I have become a fan of Twitter. An early adopter who didn’t really ‘get it’ – I’ve certainly made up for lost time and use it principally as a networking and information tool. On Twitter, I follow people in the web industry – the likes of Molly Holzschlag or Mike Kus. People I admire. I also have exchanged follows with my peers from Web forums and the like. The search facility on Twitter has always been rubbish – admittedly it is getting a hell of a lot better these days, but still woefully underpowered. So the best method for finding new and interesting people to follow is to read one-sided ‘conversations’ between your ‘friends’ and whoever they are @replying to. If you find this half of the conversation interesting, you can check out the other person’s side of the conversation, check out their profiles, and if they seem interesting, follow them. And so a functional social network exists where you can actually ‘meet’ new and interesting people who instantly get to know who you are because you’ve followed them – and the cycle continues. Or, so it used to until a few days ago.

What Twitter has decided to do this past week is remove this one-sided conversation from a followers timeline. So now, when you reply to someone, only those followers who follow both you AND the person you’re replying to will actually get to read that tweet. Not only that, but if you are replied to within a tweet that begins with an @reply to someone that you don’t follow, you still don’t get that tweet on your main timeline! Which of course, is ludicrous.

For many Twitter has now lost its usefulness. It has become Social Network tool that hinders networking. If I was at a networking event, but I could only see or hear those people that I already knew, it would be something of a waste of my time being there – well, that’s the new Twitter.

Why did Twitter make this ridiculous decision? Well, initially claiming with a nanny-state style reasoning that the change was best for its users who will no longer have to bear the frustration of reading only half of a conversation, it turned out to be a technical issue that forced the change. So thanks for the disrespectful bullshit Twitter. Due to the outrage amongst its users, Twitter will have to find a way around its technical restriction and re-implement the viewable replies system. I hope it’s sooner rather than later.

You can follow me on twitter. http://twitter.com/shubox