Michael Jackson (via Richard E. Aaron)
Boutique Cycles / Tidy Scattante (via brettjohn)
Newman.
I’ve seen quite a bit of confusion from most of the people I follow on Twitter about their new @replies settings changes.
Some time ago, “replies” were changed to be named “mentions”. The biggest advantage to this of course is that when your username is mentioned anywhere inside a tweet instead of just the beginning, Twitter can give special treatment to it and display it to you in some meaningful way. By default, Twitter has shows @replies to you, even from people you don’t follow. With mentions, they’re able to carry this same behaviour over and make it exponentially more useful. You can read more about the switch to mentions on Twitter’s blog here. The key to this change however is that even though the feature changed names, technically @replies and mentions are still two very different things, and Twitter the software still differentiates between them.
There has long been a preference in the notifications settings that allowed you to control @replies. You were presented with three options:
- Show all @replies (including people you don’t follow)
- Show @replies only of people you follow
- Don’t show @replies
Option 2 was the default which meant if someone began a tweet with @username, and you didn’t follow that username, you wouldn’t see that tweet. My guess is that most people complaining about this new change had that option selected. In fact, Twitter has said that 98% of people did. That’s a strong number for a creative director who lives and dies by the sword of statistics ;).
The loss of option 1 is what most people seem to be complaining about. People would have selected this option if they were interested in seeing @replies from people they follow to people they don’t follow. Most that are complaining are stating that this allowed for some “discovery” of some sort, a quick way to discover who people you know were having conversations with and follow them. While this is true, it often resulted in a stream of tweets full of non-relevant fractured conversations. Many Twitter clients have introduced “thread” features that allow you to see the context of the conversation and show a back and forth between those two people. Regardless, it still presented a poor experience for many people.
The interesting thing is that this preference never applied to mentions, even after they switched the feature. You will always see @mentions to people you don’t follow from people you do follow. Even after this latest update. So the discovery aspect is still there in a large way, and in a way that makes much more sense. A mention will often have much more relevance than an actual “reply”.
What’s odd is that I don’t see anyone complaining about option 3. This is the option I personally had selected. I follow many “chatty” people who seem to think Twitter is an instant messenger. I’ll often check my stream and find 100’s of updates that are just @replies back and forth. These have no value to me and I’ve really never been interested in seeing them. So I had option 3 selected which gave me mentions but no @replies. I found this to be the perfect balance in Twitter. Yes, I could just unfollow these folks, but their non-@reply tweets do have significant value to me.
So Twitter made a decision to strip away option 1 and 3 and just make option 2 standard experience.
Awhile ago Biz posted on the Twitter blog about how that preference worked, and it was news to me. I had assumed before that preference meant:
- Show all @replies to myself from anyone
- Show all @replies to myself from only people I follow
- Show all @replies to myself
In reality however, Twitter always shows you @replies to yourself from anyone, not just people you follow. This preference as I mentioned above was only for @replies to other people. But the nomenclature of the preference itself didn’t explain this. And being that I’m a full time interaction and interface designer for web apps, I believe it’s safe to bet that if it confused me, others were confused by it as well. Even Biz’s bold treatment to the statement “his has nothing to do with @replies directed to you” on the blog entry makes that clear. My educated guess is that they were receiving a silly amount of support requests from people wondering why this feature wasn’t working, when in reality they simply didn’t understand how it was supposed to work. Their solution? Just ditch the preference all together.
I personally would have preferred them to update the interface to make it clearer what the preference actually did. But I can understand Twitter’s decision. 98% of users left option 2 selected, It’s a safe bet that of the other 2%, a large majority of them had an alternative selected based on false assumptions of the feature. Which leaves an edge case and an inbox full of support requests. Eliminating the preference all together sounds like a decision I would have personally made myself.
Of course there will continue to be some backlash, most already from what I can tell is largely by people who didn’t even understand how it worked in the first place. But it’s just another classic example that once you have a feature, you’re married to it. And taking it away, especially when there’s a community dynamic at work can be hard. I’m confident however that even if they leave the change in tact, people will get used to it and go on using Twitter just as much or more as they always have. Me? I’ve got some people to go unfollow :(
“Because design problems are so multi-dimensional they are also highly interactive… . It is the very interconnectedness of all [of the relevant] factors which is the essence of design problems, rather than the isolated factors themselves. In this respect designing is like devising a crossword. Change the letters of one word and several other words will need altering necessitating even further changes… .
If there was one single characteristic which could be used to identify good designers it is the ability to integrate and combine.”
How Designer’s Think via northtemple. Lately I’ve been realizing it is incredibly hard to communicate this. More real life explanation why great designs are never the result of consensus. :(
For any clients/friends who have email/websites hosted with me, I apologize for the downtime. Media Temple is currently expecting an outage for 25% of their customers … and I’m in that 25%. You’ll be back online as soon as they are. I’ll also be looking for a different host as soon as I can access the files.
This (I deal with it every day :)) and this (love the 2outfielders1glove reference) is why XKCD is so great.
On another note, I spent about 2 minutes trying to remember back to my many many classes of English education to determine whether I should have used “is” or “are” in that last sentence. I’m sure I still got it wrong … but its the thought that counts right? And was that last “its” supposed to have an apostrophe?
I give up.
But I want to be clear from the beginning of this administration that we have made our choice. America will not be held hostage to dwindling resources, hostile regimes, and a warming planet. We will not be put off from action because action is hard. Now is the time to make the tough choices. Now is the time to meet the challenge at this crossroad of history by choosing a future that is safer for our country, prosperous for our planet, and sustainable. Those are my priorities, and they’re reflected in the executive orders that I’m about to sign.
Thank you so much for being here.
The White House - Blog Post - From peril to progress (Update 1: Full Remarks)I’ve been contemplating a lot lately … and I think that’s a good place to be. When you’re 25 and contemplating, most people think that’s cool. When I’m 45 and doing the same thing, I’ll probably be labeled as a dumbass … but since 20 years won’t come tomorrow, I can still contemplate. Here’s one thing:
What is it in our culture, or really inside us, that makes us always grasp for the latest model? Is it internal, or is it the market? Whatever it is, I think I’m going to be pushing back a bit. I’m concentrating on connecting with “vintage”, probably something to do with my obsession of history, but I’m going to be searching that out a bit.
I just gave a pause to digital photography and purchased an old Leica MP. I was drawn to full frame, making use of my lenses the way they were meant to be used, the gorgeous texture film produces and a couple other random reasons. But a primary driving force is the chance to learn and connect with where photography started. Learning to develop, process, scan … its going to be like making a fine recipe vs. McDonalds. I’m excited to see the results, especially over time … but the journey is going to be even more valuable. Connecting with something done back in the 19th century … enjoying the mechanics instead of the electronics … its going to be fascinating.
Don’t settle for used … invest in it. Make recycling a driving force for producing quality. I think it can turn out good. And fun.
Objectified Trailer
Tonight I discovered the On Demand Video section on my TiVo for the first time. I was pleased to see that Netflix was available, and while we’ve had the instant watch on my XBox 360 for awhile, there seems to be something much more natural with having it reside on TiVo.
And then the coolest part was seeing YouTube on there. We logged in to our family account and were instantly able to watch all our family videos that we’ve uploaded to our blog in the past 2 years.
Amazing.
Its times like these where I really appreciate different technologies, all doing their own thing really well, and all operating seamlessly with each other.
TiVo, Netflix & YouTube FTW.
