@Alex Yes, notice that one – replies, rather than mentions, do still live on, although at the whim of the Twitter client/API – some Tweets say “in reply to…” which is key for reconstructing conversation – which is another area that is an issue. Huge opportunity for better support for conversation threading in clients. Twitter search has a nice way of reconstructing threads.

@Jemima I do find mentions useful! And I’m sure than business Twitter folk do too… I don’t have 8 zillion followers, but it is still nice (especially when mobile) to separate mentions and replies.

Sometimes reading half a conversation is intriguing and stimulating and I’ve lost track on the number of times I’ve clicked on to find out what the response is to and what the other person is about. In fact I’ve met the many of the most interesting twitterers this way.

The thing I found strange is that the change was made today (according to Twitter’s blog) “to better reflect how folks are using Twitter regarding replies. Based on usage patterns and feedback”.
I wonder how extensive that was and whether it depends on how you use Twitter. Of all the people I follow I haven’t seen anything yet that is in favour of the decision but maybe that’s something about the type of people I follow – interested in Twitter as a social and sharing community.

The fact that #twitterfail and #fixreplies are such popular trends right now points to it being a wider circle of Twitter cognoscenti that feeling aggrieved though. I liked the title of the Guardain’s article:

Twitter breaks its social network: how quickly can it fix it? http://bit.ly/kP3wA

I can still see @replies containing people I don’t already follow, such as retweets or a tweet directed at multiple people that isn’t in reply to a previous tweet (i.e. #followfriday tweets).

It seems Twitter have removed the “in reply to” @replies that follow on from a previous tweet (i.e. by clicking “reply” on a tweet via the web or client, instead forming a new tweet and manually typing the recipients @name). Avoiding this would mean losing threaded conversation views, which I now find even more useful than @replies!

I didn’t realise that we had the above three options previously, and think these should definitely remain in place; and not just hidden in the setting, but also via the API to enable fast switching between the above behaviours in any client (this would be particularly useful when mobile).

Perhaps this is an indication that Twitter are removing features that could later form part of subscription-based premium accounts?

Given the vocal community response, it will be interesting to see how this one plays out!

@ahousley

Imagine you see this in your timeline
“@BenjaminEllis yes, it’s in options.”

What is the point of that? It’s great for you to have your question (presumably) answered, but for me, it’s useless. There’s no reason why I would click to see what you two are conversing about.

I usually try to make my replies have context out of consideration for my followers. Something like
“@BenjaminEllis yes, you can set Ubuntu to foo your bars, it’s in options – settings”

Now, my followers learn something *and* may investigate you because they know you’re interested in Ubuntu and fooing your bars.

Of course, it’s not always possible to add much – or any – context. But anything that cuts down on “@BenjaminEllis LOL!” is good in my opinion.

T

What’s interesting is it’s made me think about how useful it would be for some people to be able to switch the ‘replies to people I’m following’ function on for high volume tweeters like me – I’m know there are friends of mine who choose not to follow me cos there’s to much conversation they’re not interested in (and apparently I’m the 8th highest-volume twitterer in the UK, according to techdigest.tv )

So it would, in fact, be useful to have it even more specific, rather than less so, and then leave room for the twitter-savvy to help out the newbies. Bury it deep in a menu somewhere, so that I can tell my mates who think I tweet too much how to turn off half my stream!

Great post, sir – I love your take on things like this. Always brings clarity and context