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How Twitter broke Twitter

theincidentaleconomist.com

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Re: How Twitter broke Twitter

#11

Post by lazerwalker »

Permit wrote: post #5

I apologize if this is off topic, but from the other comments it seems that everyone here was aware of this .@ command (something I'd never heard of before). Is there some kind of list where all these special commands may be found?

Twitter's reply/reply-all logic is that if an @username is the first word of a tweet, it's considered to be a direct reply to only them (and thus is only shown to people following both of you). This makes sense, since a tweet that otherwise includes a username (say, "At the beach with @so-and-so!") is clearly not supposed to be a reply.

Adding a single character before the username is just a lazy way to throw off the 'first word as username = direct reply' check; using a period instead of any other symbol is more convention than a specific 'special command'.

Re: How Twitter broke Twitter

#12

Post by apike »

mattberg wrote: post #3

i'm actually happy about this. i hate when my twitter stream gets flooded with people who use ".@" when replying to someone else. no offense to those people, but i generally don't care about your out of context reply that much.

In my experience, the respectful way to do this is to draft a public tweet that makes sense out of context and (cc @whoever) at the end.

Re: How Twitter broke Twitter

#13

Post by bmm6o »

nollidge wrote: post #8
Permit wrote: post #5

I apologize if this is off topic, but from the other comments it seems that everyone here was aware of this .@ command (something I'd never heard of before). Is there some kind of list where all these special commands may be found?

It's not really a command, just convention. If my tweet begins with @Permit, then it's only visible to the intersection of your and my followers, so somebody that follows me but not you would not see it. But if I start it with anything else (people have just adapted . as a convention, but it could be anything) then it's visible to ALL of my followers. Except, as this article explains, if I used the formal Reply butto…

I don't use Twitter, but it sounds like you're describing the intersection, not the union.

Re: How Twitter broke Twitter

#14

Post by untog »

mattberg wrote: post #3

i'm actually happy about this. i hate when my twitter stream gets flooded with people who use ".@" when replying to someone else. no offense to those people, but i generally don't care about your out of context reply that much.

I think the point is that it isn't usually a reply. ".@SomeUser just totally nailed the presentation!" for tedious example. It's just tweeting a sentence that starts with someone's name.

Re: How Twitter broke Twitter

#15

Post by knowtheory »

7 Comments and no one with anything interesting to say. Sad times at Hacker News.

Fan out of messages is one of Twitter's greatest challenges. When looking at the compromise one has to make with the CAP theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem ), Twitter previously chose to jettison Availability, hence the fame and recognition that the Fail Whale received.

They have since decided that Availability was more important to them than Consistency.

I had simply attributed the inconsistency in the messages I'd received and the conversations I'd missed to the number of followers/follows I'd grown to, but I guess I'm not surprised to see that this is a broader issue.

Re: How Twitter broke Twitter

#16

Post by ceejayoz »

mattberg wrote: post #3

i'm actually happy about this. i hate when my twitter stream gets flooded with people who use ".@" when replying to someone else. no offense to those people, but i generally don't care about your out of context reply that much.

Probably half the people I follow on Twitter are folks I found via replies my friends were making that I wouldn't see with the current way of things.

I've followed a lot fewer people since the change hiding @replies to people I don't also follow was made, and that rather bums me out.

Re: How Twitter broke Twitter

#17

Post by jarek »

untog wrote: post #14
mattberg wrote: post #3

i'm actually happy about this. i hate when my twitter stream gets flooded with people who use ".@" when replying to someone else. no offense to those people, but i generally don't care about your out of context reply that much.

I think the point is that it isn't usually a reply. ".@SomeUser just totally nailed the presentation!" for tedious example. It's just tweeting a sentence that starts with someone's name.

Yes, but if you write that out, it will show up, because it's not a reply. It's only when you hit "reply" and post something that isn't really a reply that the behaviour breaks down.

Re: How Twitter broke Twitter

#18

Post by Permit »

nollidge wrote: post #8
Permit wrote: post #5

I apologize if this is off topic, but from the other comments it seems that everyone here was aware of this .@ command (something I'd never heard of before). Is there some kind of list where all these special commands may be found?

It's not really a command, just convention. If my tweet begins with @Permit, then it's only visible to the intersection of your and my followers, so somebody that follows me but not you would not see it. But if I start it with anything else (people have just adapted . as a convention, but it could be anything) then it's visible to ALL of my followers. Except, as this article explains, if I used the formal Reply butto…

Oh I see, that makes perfect sense actually. Thanks you.

Re: How Twitter broke Twitter

#19

Post by joejohnson »

nollidge wrote: post #4

It'd be great if .@ would still count as a reply (i.e. that tweet would still contain a pointer to the tweet it's replying to) but be visible by everyone. It's the best of both worlds. Also I wonder what happens if you hit Reply, but then delete or modify the @username. Is it still counted as a reply to that person's tweet, and therefore only visible to the intersection of your followers? EDIT: s/union/intersection

...and therefore only visible to the union of your followers?

You meant intersection of your followers.

Re: How Twitter broke Twitter

#20

Post by baddox »

nollidge wrote: post #8
Permit wrote: post #5

I apologize if this is off topic, but from the other comments it seems that everyone here was aware of this .@ command (something I'd never heard of before). Is there some kind of list where all these special commands may be found?

It's not really a command, just convention. If my tweet begins with @Permit, then it's only visible to the intersection of your and my followers, so somebody that follows me but not you would not see it. But if I start it with anything else (people have just adapted . as a convention, but it could be anything) then it's visible to ALL of my followers. Except, as this article explains, if I used the formal Reply butto…

Again, you mean the intersection of your and my followers.
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