“Based on usage patterns and feedback, we’ve learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow—it’s a good way to stay in the loop. However, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don’t follow in your timeline is undesirable. Today’s update removes this undesirable and confusing option.”—
Biz, via the Twitter blog.
Basically, this is saying if I follow @a and not @b, I’ll never see @a’s tweet saying: “@b you’re brilliant, everyone should follow you!”
This feels very wrong from a discovery perspective. More than half of the people I currently follow on twitter I found organically through @-replies from someone I was already following. Now where am I going to find new people?
What I find so interesting about all of this, is that this is the kind of decision that rookie founders make when they don’t understand their customers as well as they should. Biz and Ev, as we know, are both experienced successful entrepreneurs who use their product constantly. So I’m surprised - I’m in agreement with others here and don’t support the change - but it’s possible there is more to the story and we haven’t heard it yet. For example, maybe they will create a new tab that only contains the filtered out posts. Or simply a list of all people your friends reference who you don’t follow, as a “recommended people to follow” list.
