Thursday, May 20, 2010

Uh oh. @Twitter search continues to filter out retweets! #TR

I've re-tested it, and Twitter has not stopped its pernicious new practice of filtering the RT's out of searches from (a) hashtags and (b) homepage searchbox.

Better go back to using "TR" or "R" or "V" or "Via" etc, until we know what's going on. #TR

My initial report on the subject: "Has @Twitter Declared War on Traditional Retweets?" #TR

Twitter's false statement that it was stopping the practice: "Twitter removes the "RT" filter! #TR"

(Shortened URL for this post: )

11 comments:

  1. well... I decided to use "R" because it saves characters, so that I dont havta respell 2 much a long RT : )

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  2. Same here... "R" does it. For one thing, RETWEET is a single word, so R is an appropriate abreviation. and two, it's shorter. Of course, Twitter will probably just start filtering out that too if a lot of people start adopting it.

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  3. I wondered why people were using weird variations - is this only a Tweetdeck problem? I'm not getting it on the web.

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  4. I think you're right Sara. It's the easiest. Just deleting the T. I think I'm going to follow your example.

    Glad I hang around with smart people.

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  5. Sheila, it's got nothing to do with tweetdeck, it's a twitter problem.

    The homepage searchbox search and the hashtag search have banned tweets that contain "RT".

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  6. Sometimes the solutions are worse than the problems though. I think it's shitty twitter is doing this, but I find all the variations of an RT to be confusing.

    Twitter's position on things is that "if no one bitches we'll do it like facebook." You don't have access to your own tweets if you've written more than 3,000 or so (where was the warning on that one?). You get filtered search results, the verified accounts are rolled out to people that are NOT in danger of being spoofed, since no one has heard of many of them. The trending topics and top tweets are curated and sanitized until everyone loves Justin Bieber and there is only peace in the world, etc.

    Twitter is quickly making itself into a source of frustration and marginalizing its user base.

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  7. Honest question - why would you want to see all the retweets on a hashtag search? Every time I click an interesting looking tag it's just fifty copies of the same tweet. What am I missing?

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  8. Dear Anonymous

    1. You violated comment policy (c) which is that you're supposed to supply us with a handle if you comment anonymously.

    2. Why wouldn't I want to see different peoples' perspectives & to meet the different people who are interested in the same topic. I do keyword & hashtag searches constantly, & the retweets are an essential part of it for me. I would hate it if they were not there.

    3. Maybe you're the type of person who does searches for Justin Bieber; I do not.

    4. Why don't you give us an example of the type of search you would do, in which "retweets" would not be welcome? And give us the URL for your search results.

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  9. I can't imagine why you would want to search for a certain topic, and not want to know peoples' reactions to it.

    I can also say that I'm usually interested in seeing the people who are RT'g, because those are people I might want to follow.

    If I'm interested in a certain topic, I'm interested in knowing the people who are interested in that same topic.

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  10. Also, Anonymous, I would appreciate your giving me an example of an "important" "original" tweet, which is more important than the combined, crowdsourced conversation & reaction growing around it.

    I have never seen one.

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  11. Dear Anonymous,

    You violated comment policy (d) (also known as the hidden policy, or the catch-all policy): You have disagreed with my ill-thought out knee-jerk rant, deploring the horrors of change. Therefore I will rely on pedantry, and refer you to a semi-random set of rules I made up.

    I will also accuse you of being lesser in some way, but associating you with popular culture, making no attempt to hide my disdain for it. Make no mistake, I am better than you, because you most likely "the type of person who does searches for Justin Bieber; I do not".

    Yours sincerely,
    Amoron

    ReplyDelete

I have a few simple comment rules:

(a) No

1. rudeness
2. falsehood
3. deception
4. unfair tactics
5. comment spam
6. shilling or trolling

(b) stay on topic, and

(c) if you're anonymous, use a handle so we can distinguish you from other anonymous commenters.

Thanks for commenting.

Ray