Twitter’s recent change to their @Replies system has caused some controversy. TechCrunch puts it well
Gee, thanks Twitter. I didn’t realize that an option I manually activated was undesirable. Any other things I shouldn’t like that you’d like to make me aware of?
What they have effectively done is removed the feature that allowed people to opt-in to all replies, regardless of if you are following all the parties in a conversation.
The problem is this is one of the ways I have found people to follow.
If you @reply someone I don’t know then I am going to check them out if your conversation looks interesting. I’m sure many folks do the same thing. It’s kind of like listening in to a conversation at a cocktail party, that is how you know when it is time to switch groups and follow the trail to where the good chats are taking place.
Now I am sure Twitter folks think they are doing the right thing, but it is strange they are removing features that harm nothing rather than improve the service?
