Working around Twitter

If you’re a Twitter user, you’ll know that a few weeks ago, they changed their policy on what they will show you.  They decided to stop showing tweets that were replies by people you were following, unless you were following both the author and recipient of the tweet.

Let’s say you follow @bill but not @janet.  When Bill replies to a tweet by Janet, you won’t see it.

Someone I followed at the time of the change suddenly dropped off the radar.  I was mystified, especially after I confirmed that he was still active and hadn’t banned me.

Turned out that two events were working together here.  The first was the new Twitter policy, the second was that because of other events, he was rarely able to initiate his own tweets and most of his activity was in the form of replies to others.

There’s an easy workaround (you’re probably ahead of me here!)  I use and love Tweetdeck.  Setting up a permanent search column for all my favorite tweeple lets me see their replies to others, as Twitter used to.  Other Twitter clients would allow a similar solution

Fixed.  Until Twitter makes another change in policy, at least.

Roy

Thanks to Twitter’s Charles for putting me wise to part of the reason.