You can hear conversations only between people you know

Imagine going to a party and being able to overhear a conversation only if you knew both people.

Recently Twitter made a change that I really really really dislike.

Once upon a time if Twitter users A and B where having a conversation and you were following only A (and not B) you could see A’s @replies to B.

I liked this.  It allowed me to discover interesting people.  If one of my friends was having what appeared to be an interesting conversation I would often begin to follow the other party as well.

The other day my friend @KarrollK and I were having fun.  You see, Karroll loves almonds.  We were having fun coming up with song titles containing the word ‘DIamond’ and substituting ‘Almond’.  You know, like:

Almonds are a girls best friend
Almonds are forever

SIlly?  Yes.  But it was fun.  Two intellectual minds having a little R&R. Karroll is a very bright guy and worth following.  I would hope that anyone seeing half of our exchange was curious to learn what the fun was all about and proceed to follow both Karroll and I (and maybe join in).  That’s the way our community grows.  That’s the way we discover interesting people.

For a while, Twitter had an option in the Settings page to turn this behavior off.  In other words, you could tell Twitter to show you @replies only if you were following both parties in the conversation.  Unfortunately, Twitter just took that choice away from us and made it the standard behavior.

It’s actually more complicated than that.  To use the example of A and B, and you follow only A:

• If A types “@B hello” you will see it.
• If A hits the ‘Reply’ icon to create his reply to B you will not see it.
• If A says “I’m going to visit @B” you will see it.

I liked the old way better.