news, goofy stuff, scripting, rants, etc.

I read this story on my way in to work today, and I am stunned. Twitter has disabled the ability to follow the @replies of people you are following to people you aren’t. I personally don’t use the feature, as I have a hard enough time keeping up with the conversations people I follow are having. I do, however, see how people could be quite upset by its absence. This is not what stuns me, however. From a programming and usability perspective, there is absolutely no justification for ever REMOVING a feature. Disable it by default, or improve it, or better define it for your users, but don’t remove it. You have managed to anger people that like the feature, and perplex the people who didn’t even know it was there by making a story out of it. The only thing I have seen in twitter’s defense was from @KevinRose, who said that it “makes my stream cleaner.” How can someone who was at least partially responsible for the rise of socialy driven websites be such a dumbass? If you don’t like a feature that can be turned off, then turn it off. Don’t cheer when it is taken away from people who want to use it.

I will say that there is an argument for twitter needing to decrease the amount of noise, and therefore the load on their system, but with the growth it has seen recently, the difference must be negligible. An update to the TechCrunch article notes that @ev tweeted that due to the uproar from the user-base, they are considering alternatives. A good step to rectifying the situation; coming out early and publicly stating that they made a mistake. If only they had anticipated this.