For the Twitter folks, it was nothing but a small settings update, but for Twitter users it was definitely a big issue if you have to take into account the buzz that it has created in the “twittersphere”. If you’re a heavy Twitter user you’d know that I’m talking about the “small settings update” done by Twitter which disabled notification sent to your Twitter account from people you don’t follow. Whereas before when somebody reference your Twitter name (for non-heavy Twitter users this means every instance that “@yourname” gets cited on any Tweet) you won’t receive notifications from Twitter unless that somebody is one of the people you Follow on Twitter.
According to the Twitter Blog, this feature confused new Twitter users when they received notifications from people they don’t follow on Twitter. Hence, the decision to turn it off again.
Interestingly, while reading the different blog posts discussing this issue, majority of those who are leaving comments in the discussions are those who opposed Twitter’s decision to turn the feature off.
Well, probably those people who complained of getting too much noise and got irritated with these streams of Twitter updates that they receive from people they don’t follow on Twitter are confused by now as to what the real issue here is.
If you’re one of those who requested Twitter to turn this feature off, you maybe missing the point of using Twitter – and that has something to do with social discovery. Twitter is not a social networking site (Facebook is) but a microblogging site which has evolved into a social discussion forum and information aggregator which allows you to discover not only people but bits and pieces of information about these people and their social activity.
I really don’t see the point of turning this feature off. Can you please tell me?