Twitscoop notes the rise of @reply change protest

The change, reported yesterday, sparked some trending topics that have exploded this morning. People who likely never knew the feature option existed—the default setting, buried in the Twitter user settings on the web site, is the one everyone now has—are twittering in uproar, fueled by angry headlines on popular blogs. The small percentage of users who changed that default to show out-of-network conversation (stats only Twitter possesses) likely doesn’t match the vitriolic reaction showing up on Twitscoop.

Historically, there has been confusion about this little-known setting. The wording implies control over external interaction initiated by people not in your network, not voyeuristic glimpses at the people to whom your network is talking. In the first interpretation, the setting becomes a prevention mechanism for @reply spam, something that typically affects only those with huge networks and some measure of celebrity status. In the second correct interpretation, the setting allows you to see beyond your network through the tweets of those you already have chosen to follow.

There are three main issues that arise from this change:

1. Value of out-of-network conversation awareness
2. User control of the personal information stream
3. Cost of functionality

One other issues is relevant, too, and discussed a bit later.

Value of out-of-network conversation awareness
For myself, my misinterpretation—I wanted to let anyone reply to me—is what led me to change from the default setting in the first place. Particularly when my network was considerably smaller, I used that mode of discovery to find people in Bloomington or other alumni. As my understanding of the feature changed and my network grew, I turned it back to the default to show only conversation with people already in my network.

This had the immediate effect of quieting people I found too chatty. My information stream grew calmer and allowed for further expansion to follow others, people I likely would not have followed because of their own conversational habits or because my threshold of information had been reached. Turning this setting off allowed me to become more connected. The need for discovery lessened to the point where I didn’t miss the out-of-network conversation.

So, yes, the feature that went missing has value, but it isn’t universal value for all people, nor is it suitable for all stages of network growth.

User control of the personal information stream
If anything, the ideal response would be to give users more control over fine-tuning information streams, not fewer. I would still love to see the out-of-network conversations of my local tweeps—to help me continue to identify Bloomingtonians who have joined the system—but my network now contains many different social circles, some of which I don’t have the capacity to join and track. I don’t need the conversational awareness for those people. It would be wonderful to be able to filter content on an individual basis.

Sometimes, however, having more control increases the barriers to use, rather than lowering them. One of Twitter’s strengths is found in its simplicity. More is not always better, especially when there is a vibrant ecosystem of developers ready to scratch the itches of niche groups within the larger community. I don’t have enough information to support the decision to get rid of this particular @reply control, but I do agree with a general philosophy for Twitter to simplify.

Cost of functionality
The underlying assumption is that some internal analysis was conducted to determine that the technical implementation might be improved if Twitter didn’t have to deal with this particular option. Apparently, not many people were taking advantage of this setting, and the patterns of use the analysts can monitor provided evidence that the feature wasn’t adding significant value to Twitter. The only people who can speak to this directly, of course, are the ones who made the decision, so the issue of technical cost-benefit can only presume to be noteworthy.

There is a cultural cost, too. I’m not speaking about the reaction of the Twitter community today, but rather the norms that arise from the 140 character constraint of the channel.

Twitter already made a significant (and widely welcomed) change to include “mentions”—when @username is used anywhere in the message, not just at the beginning of the tweet—a couple months ago. This made it possible to track conversation about you without having to conduct vanity searches or set up special alerts. Although I don’t yet have significant evidence from my research on this point, I suspect that the increased visibility had an impact on how often people reference other usernames, knowing that they would become visible.

The @reply convention was historically flawed. Originally, it allowed a message to be tied to a single user—the one referenced at the beginning of the tweet—regardless of mentions. It could also be attached to the wrong tweet, since there wasn’t a way for third-party developers to associate a reply with a particular message. In fact, @replies were a cultural contribution of the early adopting Twitter community and not something that was part of the original design (about 1 in 4 tweets is a reply).

It seems to me like there is a conscious effort by Twitter to guide use of the system toward more powerful implicit controls. If you want to have someone not in your network see your tweet, a simple @username mention in the context of the message will accomplish that. If you want to help reduce your own network noise, use the @reply convention at the start of the message to keep it relevant to the people who follow you. No need for special settings; this is a behavioral change that puts the onus on the publisher to help make relevancy decisions.

A participant community
There is a fourth key issue: Twitter must involve their user base in decision making about changes. It is not sufficient to simply look at the statistical footprint of use and make unilateral decisions, often without much (if any) advance warning. There are literally millions of people from which to select random samplings and invite into conversations, focus groups and surveys, to get more grounded evidence to support decisions to change the service. I have to assume that Twitter does some of this kind of user experience inquiry, but I have no way of knowing without even more transparency from the company on their process.

For the moment, let’s assume that costs—both technical and cultural—outweighed the benefit of having the option to show out-of-network @replies. Let us also assume that there is a greater plan at work with an eye at shaping the Twitter community behavior for the better. If the decisions came out internally without involving significant input from the people using the system, then Twitter fails the same UX test that guides most technology-driven businesses.

Samir mentions a couple of common bad ideas (boldface added):

When the question of Twitter monetization first arose, one of the answers was creating tiered membership. Where each tier allowed a number of friends or followers. The problem with this idea is that it penalizes that site’s most popular users. It doesn’t make sense to hurt those that help your site the most.

There’s also been talk about making Twitter a paid site, with a monthly membership fee. Although, paid content is not dead, it requires unique content. Micro-bloggers are used to free access and have too many options. If Twitter became a paid service, users could easily just move to Plurk or any of a number of other services that do nearly the same thing.

In order for Twitter or any open service to become profitable, there needs to be a balance between opportunities to charge and respecting the dynamics that created the community in the first place. Monetization requires some non-traditional thinking that still allows the service to be free to most and API development to continue.

Charge for API Requests
Samir sees problems making money due to the presence of API. Since most people are not forced to go to the same place of interaction, it becomes difficult to sell ads to support the service. The monetization of Twitter, however, is probably tied strongly to their API in a positive way: request-rate surcharges.

The current limit is reportedly back up to 100/minute/account and has been as low as 20. What if the open API was free at a low request rate—to continue aiding development of new applications, visualizations and support tools—but that these projects could pay for a higher request rate? A paid API subscription could also offer much of its content for free but charge for special queries or deeper result sets.

As was evidenced in the May-June 2008 technical valley, when Twitter was fighting outtages and loss of functionality, third-party development atrophied slightly. Perhaps the 20-request limit is too low to encourage new development. In theory, though, successful systems would bear the profit load and might in turn recoup some of that cost by offering their own tiered API.

Self-Selected Advertisers
Another possibility that would fit the Twitter mentality is opt-in advertising. Create corporate accounts for a fee and make it a requirement that all users select at least three to follow. The service won’t work (account is disabled) unless the member is actively subscribed to three or more. Perhaps like Twitterrific, there could be a second profit point by offering paid memberships that reduce or eliminate the ads.

This might prove effective for two reasons. First, if you get enough advertisers across enough verticals (technology, politics, family, entertainment, religion, etc), there is a real choice available to each member. I don’t have to be subjected to Microsoft if I’m an Apple guy, or Pepsi if I like Coke. Because the options are plentiful and the requirement modest, the likelihood that the advertising message would be well-received is strong. Ed Dale refers to this as side-by-side marketing.

Second, because the ads appear in the form of tweets and advertisers are members, the same follower dynamics will apply. Companies who spam content will be unfollowed and replaced with another advertiser. Companies with irrelevant content will similarly see fewer eyeballs on their message. The beauty of the Twitter channel is that everyone has her own way of using the service and her own tolerance for certain kinds of behavior. Collectively, norms for advertisers will quickly be determined not simply by loyalty to the product brand but also by quality of use of the channel. It would not be unexpected to see many active users self-selecting to see more than the required number of ads.

Open Source Service Model
Our own Brad Wheeler has talked a lot over the years about how open source products can make companies profitable by monetizing support services. Perhaps the solution for Twitter is not to worry about advertising or membership costs at all but rather look at ways to help individuals manage or trick-out their accounts, or to provide development services to companies wishing to leverage the API. The tweets passing through the public stream attract people needing help, and that is where Twitter can focus their for-pay efforts.

Blip—The Twitter for Music

Blip was announced on May 9 as an extension of the Fuzz community. Fuzz is a music company that combines a label with a platform for artist promotion to active fans, as well as other artists.

While there really is only room for one Twitter-esque service in my life—despite having accounts in Pownce, Jaiku, BrightKite and others—I like the specific focus of this Blip implementation. It is about sharing music, building a personal library, and discovering new music through the activity of others. It is also building the short-message communication channel around an existing community, giving existing members a new way to interact while opening the possibility of the experience spreading virally to bring more people into the Fuzz fold.

I’m speculating on how effective this is going to be for me. I’m not one to listen to music online. I’ve got my safe collection of tunes, and I worry whenever my MacBook starts revving up the fan … a common response to visiting multimedia web sites. Blip isn’t presenting itself in that way, with very quick plays and only a little fan action (on initial loads of new music). I’m not getting the social effect at the moment due to Erik being the only one in my music network, and I’m not even certain I connected to his profile correctly—instead of “friends” one has “favorites.” I’m anxious to see if I can let the channel play in the background and hear the music others feed me. Assuming that happens, this could change the way I listen to music.

Blip passed two of my early tests easily. First, it has a sufficient sampling of Bob Schneider to scratch that itch. Boomshuffle, my most recent foray into online music, didn’t have enough Bob stocked out of the box to make it valuable. Second, it gave me something unexpected. One of my favorite performers is Stevie Ray Vaughan, a Texas guitar slinger who died at Alpine Valley, Wisconsin in 1990. I was there, also loving the rest of the bill, which included Eric Clapton, Robert Cray and Buddy Guy. A search for SRV gave me his final jam, with all of the great guitarists playing Sweet Home Chicago. After a while, I switched to the all blips channel and just let it play.

The Fuzz Manifesto

There is also a local music component to Fuzz. Bloomington, Indiana isn’t on the radar, but who knows what might happen if enough locals register and make the request to support our city’s musicians. Integration with Twitter and BrightKite—the location-based microblogging service—wouldn’t be a stretch and could give local H-T blogger Junebug Jenkins even more to write about.

source: The Gaping Void, by Hugh MacLeod (April 17, 2007)

Last week, Alex Iskold of Read/Write Web reflected on the evolution of personal publishing. He took inspiration from a claim by Twitter investor Fred Wilson that microblogging is something distinct, but grown naturally from blogging and social networking. Alex argues that sites like Twitter and Tumblr fill gaps in the space in between:

It represents a well known trend of verticalization. When new markets form they continue to be partitioned into niches. Since the gap between blogging and social networking was very wide, and the audience was quite different, microblogging emerged.

So impacting is this new channel that it has renewed the ongoing debate about the death of email. Twitter evangelists argue that email isn’t persistent, is indefensible against spam, and doesn’t work well for group interaction. Defenders of email see tweets as too short, lacking context, and potentially too low in signal-to-noise metrics. Robert Chien suggests email, while valuable, can learn a few things from Twitter, such as opening an API and adding permalinks to the mix.

Whether or not email remains the communications channel of choice, however, it is a fact that Twitter relies on email as part of its own backbone. As with most modern online communities, email is a minimal but effective means of verification that adds an important level of accountability and protection. Email exists allows Twitter to exist. It is also handy for getting around other barriers, such as the charges incurred for use of SMS with mobile phones. Email Twitter leverages email to circumvent SMS fees and service issues—a particularly timely hack given the recent problems with T-Moblie.

The interest in announcing one’s presence has given rise to other issues. Since Twitter is not the only microblogging service, message splintering is occurring as communities form around Jaiku, Pownce and others. A common solution being offered is to mass-produce messages and create redundancy in all systems. HelloTxt provides a single web form for message publishing that tries to centralize the process. It is yet to be seen if that redundancy dilutes a message or enhances it.

Some see text as too constraining. Seesmic facilitates video tweets by inviting members to not only announce what they are doing but say it in front of a camera. All of that detail, however, is not universally welcome. The United Arab Emirates banned Twitter, stating that its content is “inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political and moral values” of the nation.

Tweets are a signal that communication can occur, which is often much more important in establishing and maintaining relationships than the explicit message. Ian Curry’s description of Twitter is apt: “Like saying ‘what’s up?’ as you pass someone in the hall when you have no intention of finding out what is actually up.” A tweet is the start to a conversation, something web strategist Jeremiah Owyang calls a thread. These little interactions, regardless of form, can simply be left to dangle, or they can be lovingly crafted into a cohesive fabric. It’s a great analogy, demonstrating both scalability (connecting little actions to larger impact) and responsibility (we need to consciously cultivate and preserve the relationships we start).

By answering Twitter’s simple question, we are announcing to our corner of the world that we are ready to engage.

Cartoonist Robert Crumb predicted Twitter in the 1960′s. (source: Christopher Herot)

The seeds of tweets
The roots of microblogging owe to three main influences: Instant Relay Chat (IRC), chat status messages, and mobile phones.

IRC was invented by Jarkko Oikarinen back in 1988 after a couple decades of computer scientists toying with the idea of distributed chat. It is the forerunner to the instant messaging tools, like Yahoo! Messenger and GChat, which taught a generation of young Internet users how to synchronously chat with friends in real time. IRC also provided a rich language of protocols that used special characters to provide instruction from authors to readers. Two such examples are the namespace channel (#namespace) and the directed message (@username). Both conventions have propagated into current microblogging norms and are sometimes even hard-coded into the service.

The popularity of instant messaging evolved from merely instant communication with others who appear ready for a chat into a sub culture of creativity in the form of status messages. In most IM clients, a user can select a custom away message that will be displayed when a user goes idle or explicitly selects a dormant state. These messages became more and more creative, quickly moving from a standard “Not at my desk” to “Weeping softly in stairwell A. Back in 10.” This form of cultural communication also impacted social networking sites, most notably with the Facebook status message. In these ways, it became cultural behavior to express yourself and inquire about those you care about through short messages.

Finally, there is the mobile phone revolution, which was far more pronounced outside of the U.S. due to late adoption of technology and a less developed reliance on land-line phones. Texting became a legitimate use of a phone, as much or more than simply talking into the mouthpiece. The mobility meant that spontaneous urges to communicate could be met, and texting meant broadcast was possible to people who didn’t have phones (but did have computers). Texting—or, Short Message Service (SMS)—is celebrating its 15th birthday this year. In 1992, Neil Papworth sent the first message, “MERRY CHRISTMAS,” on December 3. It would be 1999, however, before SMS was able to communicate between providers, prompting an explosion of use. For 8-bit data messages, the maximum length is a familiar 140 characters.

In Twitter, we see strong evidence of all three of these cultures converging at an opportune moment. People are used to composing short messages on demand. They seek out such messages to gain awareness about what people in their social networks are doing. And the conventions they use when texting are persistent enough to provide some established community norms. This is the world into which Evan Williams hatched his idea.

Introducing … Twitter
Twitter is a thriving community of both members and, thanks to an early decision to open the API, developers. The company engineered several ways for members to post and receive tweets, the short 140-character messages published into the information stream. Text can be published through the Twitter web site, an instant messaging client, or by texting from a cell phone.

According to TwitDir—a third-party search tool keeping track of the big nodes in the network—Twitter currently boasts 593,645 public accounts and is growing by over 1000 new members daily. This, just over one year after the service officially launched. One has to have some 12,000 tweets and one-tenth that number in followers to make the top 100 in either category. I’ve had 1731 tweets myself with a reasonable following of 112 people. Intended use has a lot to do with that, as my primary interest is in keeping tabs on local Twitter members. The most active members are more about broadcast than mutual connection.

That’s not the story of Twitter. Twitter, after all, is about community.

Two key design strategies are instrumental to the success of the service. First, there is its simplicity. Unlike other microblogging entries, like Pownce, Twitter doesn’t try to be more than it is. Members compose short messages, and Twitter makes sure they are distributed in a self-organizing network. In fact, the added constraints that prevent things like file sharing and longer messages are part of the attraction. There is a very low barrier of entry, made even lower by the numerous ways you can now interact with the information streams.

The second key decision is an enterprise one: making access to the membership and content mechanisms available to developers. Most of the cool innovations with Twitter—such as the popular Macintosh desktop client, Twitterrific—have not been applications built by Obvious. They have been built by members so enamored with the service that they want to make it better. This creates a personal investment in Twitter for many people with influence to promote its use to a wider audience. The easier it becomes to access Twitter, the more new professions find ways to leverage the rapidly growing community and adopt tweeting as practice.

An invested community also means influence. So many people were using the IRC convention for individual replies that the service added support for the @ command, attaching those tweets to specific user content. There has been a lot of talk about supporting richer namespaces, or channels, that would allow members to follow topical discussions around a cause or convention. Jaiku, the European microblogging system recently acquired by Google, does support channels. Demand for blocking, search and term tracking led to improvements in the Twitter programming, although the community still demands tweaks. As more people look to social graph unification efforts, like OpenID and OpenSocial, conversation inevitably suggests future mashups.

The microblogging philosophy
In November, Twitter has been getting more and more play in both the blogosphere and the traditional media. One of the first attempts at a twitter guide for new users was probably Ed Dale’s Tao of Twitter movie. Two other major guides have been published, by Caroline Middlebrook and Dave Taylor, and several others have published overviews as well. All of them see a phenomenon in development.

Microblogging has been described in many ways. The most loving called it ambient intimacy. This is what Leisa Reichelt of Disambiguity had to say about Twitter back in early March:

Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. Flickr lets me see what friends are eating for lunch, how they’ve redecorated their bedroom, their latest haircut. Twitter tells me when they’re hungry, what technology is currently frustrating them, who they’re having drinks with tonight.

There are other apt descriptions. Clive Thompson’s analysis for Wired back in June likened the Twitter effect to a sixth sense, the kind that is incredibly useful in understanding when to interact with co-workers. It is a low-expectation IRC, the equivalent of saying “what’s up?” as you pass someone in the hall when you have no intention of finding out what is actually up, a phatic function.

Since Twitter’s splash at SxSW, several other microblogging services have tried to catch that same lighting in a bottle. Jaiku and Pownce are considered the biggest rivals of Twitter, but other entries into the new domain include Tumblr, MySay, Hictu, MoodMill, Frazr, IRateMyDay, Emotionr, Wamadu, Zannel, Soup, and PlaceShout. Some are blatant rip-offs of the idea, even going so far as to swipe markup code and terminology. Whenever new startup companies involve an information stream, the reviews inevitably compare them to Twitter. What separates Twitter from the crowd is its combination of timing, transparency and simplicity. And now, a community that is over a half million strong.

Twitter surpassed a half-million active members this fall. Their interest is not only as producers and consumers of content, but also as developers of desktop applications, information visualization, mashups with other Internet tools, and the creation of completely new services not possible before Twitter. Tweets have been used to alert local communities to emergency situations and to play games. They can even facilitate the sale of beer. Twitter is not without its critics, but it seems clear that microblogging is here to stay as a communication channel.

Over the next week, BlogSchmog will explore different aspects of Twitter based on eight months of use.

A brief history of microblogging
How did Twitter get its start?
Twitter stood on the shoulders of giants, IRC and IM status messages, to gain traction. There are several entrants in the domain of microblogging, but the combination of simplicity, an open API and good timing give Twitter a dramatic edge in any race.

Twitter utilitarianism
How do people use Twitter?
People rely on Twitter for different reasons. Some want to share the details of their lives, while others prefer to share news and links. About one in eight just want to chat. People tweet to educate, to market products, to promote causes, and to entertain.

Innovating Twitter
How is the community improving Twitter?
The open API has generated a mass of member-developed tools to publish, access and otherwise manage tweet content. Many services are being made better through the mashups that connect to the Twitter community.

Visualizing the information stream
How is Twitter information being understood?
Whether it is pictures built from member profiles or blocks indicating connections between authors, Twitters many information streams are being visualized in interesting ways that go beyond answering the basic question, “What are you doing?”

A paradigm shift towards presence
Is microblogging something new?
Young services like Twitter and Tumblr are seen by some as a natural evolution of personal presence on the Internet, filling a gap between blogging and social networking. Some say it is in the process of obsoleting email.

The social effects of a tweet
How is Twitter changing lives? (TBA)
The biggest payoff of adoption is a greater sense of connection to your community of interest. The reward comes in the form of timely information and virtual proximity to those you care about, and an increased sense of connection is bound to alter behavior.

Criticism of Twitter
Why do people hate Twitter? (TBA)
The haters fall into two main categories—those who never tried it, and those who don’t get it. There are some members, though, who gave it a go but got sick of the technical problems or the level of distraction it afforded.

Academic interest in microblogging
How will Twitter impact scholarly research? (TBA)
The University of Maryland published the first academic study on Twitter, analyzing the content and membership to come up with four types of members. The service has merited some mention in a few other publications, but 2008 should be a year when Twitter is the talk of the lecture circuit.

I hope I can keep to the schedule. A simple search for “Twitter” on this blog underscores my interest in this young service:

• "Twitter"—my first review of Twitter on March 13, 2007
• "WP plug-in directory"—the WordPress community made early use of the open API
• "Value in the Network"—Shannon Clark’s meshwalk made some use of Twitter
• "Meebo Rooms"—group chat would be dramatically improved with Twitter notifications
• "Ah, Tweet mystery of life"—why I like Twitter, circa May 2007
• "TweetVolume"—early data mining, comparing use of keywords in public tweets
• "Conflicting Messages"—a tweet inspires some reflection on parenting and education
• "Steven Wright is not Not Steven Wright"—identity issues with my favorite comedian
• "Art a’Twitter"—creative use of tiling software and Twitter profile pictures
• "Twit, Twitter, Twitterer"—a June 2007 overview of the Twitter phenomenon
• "Tweeting the red pill"—a visualization of a tweet stream
• "v1d30 f0r l4ughs"—one of the early spam tweets I wound up liking
• "Digg Vision"—admiring the work of Brian Shaler, who would become an uber-twitterer
• "Click-up lines"—creative use of Twitter to get referral book sales with Amazon
• "Directory 2.0"—was tipped off to this site through a tweet
• "Remember the Milk"—a great application leveraging Twitter for posting
• "Getting the low down with FeedUp"—making use of Kosmix’s FeedUp to track Twitter references
• "VCs want traction"—reacting to news that Twitter got funding
• "Invitation to Web 2.0"—hawking some beta invites, including one to Twitter competitor Pownce
• "CoComment"—just a small mention of wanting to share information via Twitter
• "You don’t ping me flowers anymore"—this needs a Twitterrific-esque desktop application
• "Hide ‘n Tweet"—a great use of Twitter: as a mixed reality game of hide’n'seek
• "IMified"—another way to post tweets
• "Bloomington not yet a’Twitter"—imagining local information flow if more people used Twitter
• "The Local Tweet Stream"—trying to get a handle on the local early adopters of Twitter
• "31Og Day"—three of my 31Og Day recommends are in my tweet stream
• "Intertubes 1.0"—laughing at Patrick Marshall’s rejection of Twitter
• "PingSchming"—Twitter and some related feeds are part of my blogroll
• "Twitter rules"—exploring Scoble’s rules to ignore for Twitter etiquette
• "Twitter and Google-Jaiku can co-exist"—reacting to news that Google bought Jaiku
• "Artistnet"—using Twitterrific as a metaphor for information alerts
• "Emergency 2.0"—the first news of a local sniper came as a tweet
• "Tao of Twitter"—how to market on Twitter
• "A world of wiki" and "Highlights of WikiSym 2007"—wishing more people would tweet WikiSym 2007
• "Tear It Down"—found a new political site through a tweet
• "New APIs for Pownce and Meebo"—opening APIs for a competitor and an ideal partner
• "Joss Whedon on Writers"—following the Writers’ Strike on Twitter
• "ClipMarks addiction"—changing habits of information processing
• "Designed interruptions"—how Twitter can fit into one’s life
• "BOOM (shuffle)"—news from my personal information stream
• "Hidden communities"—two non-Twitter examples of the power of transparency