Why Twitter could do with a shhhhh button
After initially disliking the new retweet functionality on Twitter, I’ve grown to like it. It’s rediculously easy to retweet someone else now. It’s literally 2 clicks, only 1 if you dare remove the overly protective ‘Are you sure you want to retweet this?’ confirmation that some twitter clients are keen on.
But that also means that people you follow are retweeting far more.
Before, retweets looked fairly discreet, they just had RT at the beginning within the tweet itself. Now though, if you choose to use the new ‘baked in’ retweet, the tweeted tweeter gets their avatar in your stream. This seems nice because it gives prominence to people that give good tweet. Thereby helping people to discover more people to follow. But then, some people aren’t as judicious with the retweet button.
Scobleizer is one of those industry pundits that I’ve followed, unfollowed and followed again a couple of times now. It’s usually some kind of passive self-important tweet that gets me reaching for the unfollow.
And today, I came across this nice little feature on the main web client.
So, when you visit the profile in question, you see this.
There’s a couple of reasons this doesn’t totally appeal to me. Firstly, if I start blocking retweets from one person and I have nowhere to see them all in one place, it feels a bit messy. I personally need somewhere to get an overview of this kind of thing. It feels like my setting would be too spread out. But that’s fairly personal. Secondly, that little icon is the same as the button that’s actually used to retweet. It seems counter-intuitive that you would click the same button to stop retweets as you would to actually retweet them. Picky I know, but these little things are important to us.
What I’d really love is a way of not quite unfollowing someone but just taking a bit of break from them. I want to say ‘Shhh Scoble, that’s enough, it’s not you, it’s me, I’ve just had my fill of gushing and over-excited tech coverage for one day”. It would be like some kind of purgatory you could send people to. Like taking a break.
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About the author
Mike is a planner and service designer mildly obsessed with how the web is transforming government and society. Easily distracted, reformed techie, northern, likes tea and music.
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Comments (7)
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Responses (0)
Thanks for sharing this. I follow some people who do an excessive amount of RTing and I will use this function. Great find!
Lee Kolbert
December 31, 2009
at 4:15 pm
Problem is (and I don’t know if Scoble has some special deal with Twitter or whatever the deal is), when I click the button to stop retweets from Scoble it doesn’t actually stop them – I continue getting them! Things are so broken with these new retweets…
IrishWonder
December 31, 2009
at 4:16 pm
And by the way, I think it’s funny that Scoble retweeted your tweet about this post. :)
Lee Kolbert
December 31, 2009
at 4:17 pm
Haha, yeah that was pretty funny. Obviously I didn’t notice it straight away.
mike
January 3, 2010
at 11:49 pm
I’ve always thought it would be awesome to have a “mute for the rest of the day” button. People on Twitter tend to get into those “zones” where they get a little Tweet-happy (live blogging an event you’re not interested in, watching a sporting event, etc.) and this would let you get those out of your stream but not require you to un-follow and remember to re-follow.
Alex Rainert
January 4, 2010
at 5:04 am
One way to deal with someone who is overwhelming your stream is to put him/her on a list titled “too noisy” and then unfollow them. That way you can see what they write, but they won’t clutter up your home screen. Sorry for being overwhelming occassionally! Think how I feel with 16,000 people aimed at me!
Robert Scoble
January 5, 2010
at 11:09 pm
Thanks for the tip Robert.
I think you probably tweet and retweet as much as your followers want you to.
mike
January 7, 2010
at 10:02 am