
Twitter’s Spectacularly Awful 24 Hours - hko
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/14/twitters-spectacularly-awful-24-hours/
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evdawg
I think it's a pretty pissy thing for al3x
(<http://twitter.com/al3x/status/1786897274>) to publicly denounce a
controversial feature change like that... at least wait until the backlash is
over! He needs to support his company's decisions, instead of being so eager
to divert blame from himself.

Although my comment could be completely void if Techcrunch is overplaying the
entire situation, which _is_ probably the case...

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gojomo
Once upon a time, I would have agreed with you about keeping gripes internal,
at least until the dust settles.

But in the rising operating mode of constant deep interaction with a large
vocal userbase, authentically sharing internal dissent might better manage
customer expectations. It acknowledges and mollifies, a little, without making
a commitment.

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cubicle67
Is there a way I can exclude TechCrunch from my list? It's always puerile
gossip or linkbait.

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KirinDave
It amazes me how _upset_ and _involved_ people are in an obscure option of a
microblogging service. People who are so upset really need to get some
freakin' perspective.

But what amuses me most is when commentators on the subject say the new system
is convoluted. _Both_ systems were convoluted and weird. The new mechanism is
just as weird as the old one was. Every website's features are just gentle
wrappers around their underlying architecture. When you look at them carefully
you can see the system underneath, and that system is complicated no matter
what you do.

~~~
Tichy
I don't understand why it was deemed confusing. If I follow somebody, I want
to read ALL their updates, no matter if they are replying to somebody or not.
What is confusing about just seeing everything somebody tweets? I find it very
confusing to suddenly not see everything anymore.

Also I don't understand how it could have been a scaling issue, since it was
just showing all tweets, no fancy filtering or anything. Removing certain
tweets from the timeline seems a lot more complicated ("if tweet is reply and
!user follows person_replied_to, remove post").

It makes me upset because it was one of the major ways to discover new people
to follow on twitter. A lot of viral marketing schemes are also based on this
(and I mean not in a bad way). So it is not just a small thing to change.

~~~
Timothee
Obviously, I have no idea how the service was built and it's most likely much
more complicated than what it looks like but I, too, was surprised to read
that it was a scaling issue. I'd be curious to know why an @reply makes it
different from a regular status update.

Also, (even though I don't really care that much honestly) as a new user, I
would say that seeing everything was a way to discover other people and to
potentially be discovered as well. I feel like it's important to discover
people as the very beginning so that you get hooked on Twitter.

If anyone can think of an explanation on the scaling issue, I'd be happy to
read it.

~~~
kscaldef
The best hypothesis on the scaling explanation is that at the point where your
tweet is injected into the message bus, they have your full friend-of-
followers network available. With that information, they can reduce the number
of followers that they send a message to. Otherwise, they blast it to
everyone, and then figure out on the receiving end if it's an @reply that that
person wants to see.

What doesn't make sense about this is that if they were to store the @reply
preference for your followers along with the friend-of-followers graph, they
could maintain the original behavior, and avoid unneeded traffic on the
message bus.

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swombat
This article is pure gossip rag stuff, but at the same time it gives a nice
timeline of events for those of us too busy to follow every little feature-
change brouhaha. I wouldn't want to see too many articles in this style, but
this particular one is ok, imho.

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dryicerx
_Problem 8: A server failed, making Twitter unusable for several hours._

Ahem... a single point of failure. Ouch.

~~~
jeremymcanally
I sincerely doubt it was _one_ server.

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ivankirigin

      "Users will pick up on this waffling, smell blood and go in for the kill."

Not everyone is as adversarial as a TechCrunch author. (though I like
Siegler's coverage there)

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rrival
Tired of hearing so much about twitter. It's like a reality show with these
clowns. It should be an open protocol.

~~~
riffic
Pressure them to support OpenMicroBlogging..

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DannoHung
I don't get it... I don't even have an option to turn off/on @replies to
people I don't follow... I just see them all.

I've NEVER had an option to turn off @replies... is this only a thing for
users who've signed up recently?

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kscaldef
Unless you signed up in the last day or two, you most certainly did have that
option.

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erlanger
Does something like Twitter really warrant this sort of response? I mean, if
my power goes out, or my internet, or anything like that, I'd be reasonably
upset with the utility company, but this is a free service. I don't use
Twitter so I'm a poor judge of its value.

~~~
kscaldef
It's not really the users' fault that Twitter hasn't deigned to think of a
business model.

