5 ms·

> New Tweets that begin with a username will reach all your followers. (That means you’ll no longer have to use the ”.@” convention, which people currently use

> New Tweets that begin with a username will reach all your followers. (That means you’ll no longer have to use the ”.@” convention, which people currently use to broadcast Tweets broadly.) If you want a reply to be seen by all your followers, you will be able to Retweet it to signal that you intend for it to be viewed more broadly. This is terrible. They are introducing a way to broadcast mentions without using .@, which is great. So why also making non-reply mentions forcefully broadcasted, with no way to hide them!? I don't want my @ThreeUKSupport tweets to go to all my followers.

subb 10y ago
This is badly phrased but it's for New Tweets only.
- robzyb 10y ago
  Some (most?) of his @ThreeUKSupport tweets are New Tweets and he doesn't want these going to his followers.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Dumb workaround, but you could just pick a random tweet from @ThreeUKSupport and reply to it to initiate the conversation.
    - bad_user 10y ago
      Or @ThreeUKSupport could enable private messages (Direct Messages).
      - paublyrne 10y ago
        Or email support.
        dave2000 10y ago
        Email support for most companies is awful. I've always had better response from Twitter; perhaps because it's all out in the open.
        bad_user 10y ago
        Actually companies make it hard on purpose to find an email address or contact form, because support is expensive. It's a well known trick to burry that deep within some bullshit interface with answers to questions you don't care about. I always find the "Was this helpful?" questions frustrating on support pages, because they don't have a "No, I want to freaking talk to somebody" button.
- kmfrk 10y ago
  And the mobile interface only has a New Tweet button; nothing for individual accounts.
johns 10y ago
Then just reply to any random tweet on their timeline.
- creshal 10y ago
  Also known as "the worst conversation UX since the abolishment of clay tablets".
- orbitur 10y ago
  People accidentally do that all the time, and it's terrible when you're trying to read relevant replies.
- visakanv 10y ago
  Which incentivizes the ruining of conversation threads with unrelated/irrelevant tweets.
- Twirrim 10y ago
  That's probably going to break all sorts of these customer service integration tools.
macintux 10y ago
Yeah, this is problematic. I had the same concern (once I wrapped my brain around the behavioral distinction between replies and new tweets). I suppose this will force more use of DMs for interactions with businesses.
tbassetto 10y ago
Honest question: shouldn't you send a DM or an email to @ThreeUKSupport instead of starting a public discussion with them?
- shawabawa3 10y ago
  Unfortunately it seems to be becoming more and more common for companies to only care about customer service if you message them publicly
- BurritoAlPastor 10y ago
  You would perhaps be dismayed to learn that some organizations only offer decent support via Twitter. Presumably because it's a public venue.
- apocalyptic0n3 10y ago
  Did something change or can you DM anyone now? Last I remember, you had to either be following each other or the recipient had to opt-in to anyone being able to DM them. It may have changed recently (my Twitter usage has definitely dropped off a cliff in the last year or so, so I may have missed it)
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    The receiver has to switch on the "anyone can DM me" option. Likely added in response to many service providers using twitter as a support channel.
james_pm 10y ago
Pretty much the equivalent of being cc'ed whenever someone emails a email address. There's a reason I filter out .@ in Tweetbot. I don't want to see all the "open complaining" like people looking to shame company X for wronging them somehow.
unlinker 10y ago
This worked like that years ago. Horrible decision to undo that "fix".
- cstejerean 10y ago
  That fix was intended to hide replies before replies were a first class citizen. At that time there was no easy way to distinguish between a reply and a tweet that simply started with a @. Now that replies are first class citizens they can revisit this "fix". And plenty of people didn't like this fix when it was first introduced, that's why .@ started as a convention after it.
  - unlinker 10y ago
    That fix was not a quick hack, it was a full-fledged feature that has been there since... 2009?
    - rwc 10y ago
      Everything old is new again... http://techcrunch.com/2009/05/12/twitter-decides-were-not-smart-enough-for-replies-changes-them-again/ http://techcrunch.com/2009/05/12/twitter-decides-were-not-sm...
digi_owl 10y ago
Frankly things have gotten weird every since the focus shifted from SMS (where the @ and .@ thing started) to their app and website.
- cstejerean 10y ago
  SMS was an after thought long before .@ started. Tweets starting with @ weren't treated specially, and replies weren't yet a thing. Then Twitter started hiding tweets that started with @ and there was a good amount of backlash from people complaining that this would reduce their ability to discover other interesting accounts by seeing who the people they follow interact with. Twitter however stuck with it and then the .@ convention started as a workaround. Now they are just going back to that original behavior except replies are an actual thing now so they can differentiate tweets that simply start with a @ from those that are actual replies, which couldn't be done when this change was first introduced.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    Yet when they implemented the "retweet with a comment" system (embedding one tweet within another, accessed via the retweet button) they didn't think far enough ahead to avoid breaking their reply tracking. This because people have taken to using said system to respond to tweets.
jonathansizz 10y ago
I don't understand why Twitter never implemented some sort of categorization feature. There are many individuals that I'd follow if I could just get a subset of their tweets in my feed. For example, I might want to follow scientists' tweets on science, but not their political or favourite sport team tweets. Right now it's either all or nothing, but why can't people categorize their tweets so only people interested in them see them? This would be better for both parties.
- psychometry 10y ago
  Same goes for Facebook. They surely have the ability to discern political posts from non-political ones, but the only control over what appears on our news feeds is follow/unfollow.
  - golergka 10y ago
    Facebook feed does that for you.
    - Jordrok 10y ago
      Yes. You must have faith in the algorithm. Do not question its results.
  - PeCaN 10y ago
    "Hide all from ..." is the single best Facebook feature. I use it a lot, I think I have most political sites hidden now.
- baddox 10y ago
  I think that's one of those ideas that sounds nice, but is just too complex for most tweet authors to use reliably.
  - PeCaN 10y ago
    Allow users to tag a set of hashtags as a category. Make hashtags user-taggable and suddenly sorting and categorizing is easy. Undoubtedly this just sounds like a good idea to the "few orthogonal abstractions" hacker brain, but with the right UI it could work.

subb 10y ago

This is badly phrased but it's for New Tweets only.

robzyb 10y ago
Some (most?) of his @ThreeUKSupport tweets are New Tweets and he doesn't want these going to his followers.
- mikeash 10y ago
  Dumb workaround, but you could just pick a random tweet from @ThreeUKSupport and reply to it to initiate the conversation.
  - bad_user 10y ago
    Or @ThreeUKSupport could enable private messages (Direct Messages).
    - paublyrne 10y ago
      Or email support.
      - dave2000 10y ago
        Email support for most companies is awful. I've always had better response from Twitter; perhaps because it's all out in the open.
        bad_user 10y ago
        Actually companies make it hard on purpose to find an email address or contact form, because support is expensive. It's a well known trick to burry that deep within some bullshit interface with answers to questions you don't care about. I always find the "Was this helpful?" questions frustrating on support pages, because they don't have a "No, I want to freaking talk to somebody" button.
kmfrk 10y ago
And the mobile interface only has a New Tweet button; nothing for individual accounts.

johns 10y ago

Then just reply to any random tweet on their timeline.

creshal 10y ago
Also known as "the worst conversation UX since the abolishment of clay tablets".
orbitur 10y ago
People accidentally do that all the time, and it's terrible when you're trying to read relevant replies.
visakanv 10y ago
Which incentivizes the ruining of conversation threads with unrelated/irrelevant tweets.
Twirrim 10y ago
That's probably going to break all sorts of these customer service integration tools.

macintux 10y ago

Yeah, this is problematic. I had the same concern (once I wrapped my brain around the behavioral distinction between replies and new tweets). I suppose this will force more use of DMs for interactions with businesses.

tbassetto 10y ago

Honest question: shouldn't you send a DM or an email to @ThreeUKSupport instead of starting a public discussion with them?

shawabawa3 10y ago
Unfortunately it seems to be becoming more and more common for companies to only care about customer service if you message them publicly
BurritoAlPastor 10y ago
You would perhaps be dismayed to learn that some organizations only offer decent support via Twitter. Presumably because it's a public venue.
apocalyptic0n3 10y ago
Did something change or can you DM anyone now? Last I remember, you had to either be following each other or the recipient had to opt-in to anyone being able to DM them. It may have changed recently (my Twitter usage has definitely dropped off a cliff in the last year or so, so I may have missed it)
- digi_owl 10y ago
  The receiver has to switch on the "anyone can DM me" option. Likely added in response to many service providers using twitter as a support channel.

james_pm 10y ago

Pretty much the equivalent of being cc'ed whenever someone emails a email address. There's a reason I filter out .@ in Tweetbot. I don't want to see all the "open complaining" like people looking to shame company X for wronging them somehow.

unlinker 10y ago

This worked like that years ago. Horrible decision to undo that "fix".

cstejerean 10y ago
That fix was intended to hide replies before replies were a first class citizen. At that time there was no easy way to distinguish between a reply and a tweet that simply started with a @. Now that replies are first class citizens they can revisit this "fix". And plenty of people didn't like this fix when it was first introduced, that's why .@ started as a convention after it.
- unlinker 10y ago
  That fix was not a quick hack, it was a full-fledged feature that has been there since... 2009?
  - rwc 10y ago
    Everything old is new again... http://techcrunch.com/2009/05/12/twitter-decides-were-not-smart-enough-for-replies-changes-them-again/ http://techcrunch.com/2009/05/12/twitter-decides-were-not-sm...

digi_owl 10y ago

Frankly things have gotten weird every since the focus shifted from SMS (where the @ and .@ thing started) to their app and website.

cstejerean 10y ago
SMS was an after thought long before .@ started. Tweets starting with @ weren't treated specially, and replies weren't yet a thing. Then Twitter started hiding tweets that started with @ and there was a good amount of backlash from people complaining that this would reduce their ability to discover other interesting accounts by seeing who the people they follow interact with. Twitter however stuck with it and then the .@ convention started as a workaround. Now they are just going back to that original behavior except replies are an actual thing now so they can differentiate tweets that simply start with a @ from those that are actual replies, which couldn't be done when this change was first introduced.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Yet when they implemented the "retweet with a comment" system (embedding one tweet within another, accessed via the retweet button) they didn't think far enough ahead to avoid breaking their reply tracking. This because people have taken to using said system to respond to tweets.

jonathansizz 10y ago

I don't understand why Twitter never implemented some sort of categorization feature. There are many individuals that I'd follow if I could just get a subset of their tweets in my feed. For example, I might want to follow scientists' tweets on science, but not their political or favourite sport team tweets. Right now it's either all or nothing, but why can't people categorize their tweets so only people interested in them see them? This would be better for both parties.

psychometry 10y ago
Same goes for Facebook. They surely have the ability to discern political posts from non-political ones, but the only control over what appears on our news feeds is follow/unfollow.
- golergka 10y ago
  Facebook feed does that for you.
  - Jordrok 10y ago
    Yes. You must have faith in the algorithm. Do not question its results.
- PeCaN 10y ago
  "Hide all from ..." is the single best Facebook feature. I use it a lot, I think I have most political sites hidden now.
baddox 10y ago
I think that's one of those ideas that sounds nice, but is just too complex for most tweet authors to use reliably.
- PeCaN 10y ago
  Allow users to tag a set of hashtags as a category. Make hashtags user-taggable and suddenly sorting and categorizing is easy. Undoubtedly this just sounds like a good idea to the "few orthogonal abstractions" hacker brain, but with the right UI it could work.