Yesterday Twitter implemented a change that, according to the powers that be, 98% of Twitter users wouldn’t notice. They took away an option – one that was not turned on by default, but one that people who use Twitter as a way to explore and find interesting people and conversations really depended on. Now, if you don’t use Twitter, or you never had changed the settings for @ replies, you probably don’t even see any difference and wonder what the point is.

First, though, a caveat: Twitter is, at this very moment, undergoing “Scheduled Maintenance” which could render this whole thing moot – in other words, they could just be changing it all back, ending the debate.

Even with the low 2% estimate of users who used the option, there are an estimated 6 million members on twitter – meaning that the change – essentially a dumbing-down of Twitter -  affects some 120,000 people. It’s like Twitter is using the public-relations form of the “Law of Large Numbers” to suggest that the change is minor (that’s the one where you terrify people by saying hundreds of people have the “swine flu”, without mentioning that hundreds of people out of over 6 billion is odds of tens of millions to one against YOU getting it). They’re quickly learning otherwise, as #fixreplies has become the top search term and has remained there since not long after the change. Ironically, the users they affected most are also the most likely to be true twitter devotees – that small number of people who likely use Twitter the most.

I could spout all sorts of bizarre conspiracy theories about them trying to alienate the people who “tweet too much” to reduce their server load, or that they’re doing it to satisfy this new influx of the nouveau-geek variety (a.k.a. Celebrities told by their publicists that “The Twitter is hot, get on it”). Quite frankly, though, most of them are pretty ridiculous. Read the rest of this entry »