Twitter Removes @username Reply Feature

Twitter recently announced on their blog page a small settings update that stops you from seeing the replies sent by people you don’t follow to people you follow. Before now, the Notices Setting page looks like the image below where you have the option to choose if you want to receive all @username replies or only receive from the people you are following or never to receive @ replies all.

Image Credit: Mashable

Twitter claims that since only a small fraction of users (about 2% of their subscriber base) use this feature and it won’t be necessary receiving a one sided message so they decided to take the feature off.

The new Twitter Settings update however does not give user the option of choosing if you want to receive @replies or not. Twitter must have assumed that all their several millions subscribers want @replies enabled.

Please, get this clear; Twitter is not removing the entire @username replies. When someone you follow sends you @ reply, you will receive it but if someone you follow receives an @ reply from someone you don’t follow, you will  not see the @ reply. Visit Twitter’s blog for clarity.

This feature that was removed is quite useful as it is an interesting way to discover twitter users you can follow.

Some twitter users have however started a movement using the #fixreplies tag to make sure Twitter reverts to the old Setting.