Twitter is on a rampage to improve user experience not only in terms of simpler user interface and ease of using, but also by emphasising on the User Identification methods. A large portion of Twitter users are followers of their favourite celebrity tweeters [like Jonathon Ross, Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry, Demi Moore - the list is endless]. Now with fame and power comes the curse of image vulnerability. For e.g. the existing Twitter account for some celebrities like famous Bollywood actor Aamir Khan and James Corden are not real. Those are fake ones, and Twitter is pushing it hard to do a check on these, so as to prevent such acts of creation of fake accounts.

In the latest blog post on Twitter, they have discussed how a certain manager, Tony La Russa has filed a lawsuit for impersonation of his name to create an account. Twitter, however has not agreed to pay any settlement for the lawsuit. To prevent occurence of any such future activities, Twitter will be rolling out identity checks termed as Verified Accounts. This check will show a tick mark next to the Profile name of a user, and will be performed on select users [comprising of public figures, officials, organisations etc.]

An important tip to check the identity of a Twitter user is to visit the URL linked in the user profile. Fake users often tend to use the Official URL of that particular user [searchable on Google]. If this particular URL links back to the twitter ID, it is certain, that the user is real and not a fake one.

Issues with this form of verification though, is that there are loads of users out there, who have shortened URLs on their profile, and these URLs lead to some dodgey website [often having an appended username at the tail] talking about affiliate marketing or money making on the internet in the next 2 hours.

In my previous post on Twitter’s dealing with the @Reply changes and the subsequent uproar from users, I had discussed about Twitter getting a new improved version of the old @Reply settings. But yes, it is confirmed that the previous settings of seeing @Reply of users that you did not follow was not coming back. 

In the latest blog post by Twitter [The Replies Kerfuffle] , they have confirmed that the old @reply settings would not be brought back due to technical reasons and they have enlisted the product design and technical problems with the functionality. And excerpt is given below.

Even though only 3% of all Twitter accounts ever changed this setting away from the default, it was causing a strain and impacting other parts of the system. Every time someone wrote a reply Twitter had to check and see what each of their followers’ reply setting was and then manifest that tweet accordingly in their timeline—this was the most expensive work the database was doing and it was causing other features to degrade which lead to SMS delays, inconsistencies in following, fluctuations in direct message counts, and more. Ideally, we would redesign and rebuild this feature but there was no time, hence the sudden deploy.

For the entire post, visit the link here.

Twitter has been facing a lot of uproar replies about the recent change in the replies setting. The #FixReplies introduced by Twitter a day back hasn’t gone down quite well with the users and many issues have been reported. Now what were the problems? 

Initially, Twitter’s way of handling replies by users was set to three options:

1. See replies to and from people you follow.

2. See replies from followers as well anyone (i.e. all @ replies)

3. See no @replies at all.

Twitter has now removed these options and the only one available right now is the @replies to and from followers will be visible, and everything else will not be. Here is the post where Twitter announced this change (titled: Small Setting Update). Users have been complaining about the removal of the options. 

Well, if anyone is at all bothered by reading all the @replies, they could surely go to the settings and change their own personal twitter space from being ‘cluttered’ by @replies. But not any more, as it’s now only the way Twitter would want it to be. 

In another post today on the Twitter Blog (We Learned a Lot) , Twitter announced that they have received a lot of negative feedback on the change. But things were to remain unchanged. However, there would be a new functionality introduced called the ‘new improved version of the old @reply’

Here’s what they had to say:

First, we’re making a change such that any updates beginning with @username (that are not explicitly created by clicking on the reply icon) will be seen by everyone following that account. This will bring back some serendipity and discovery and we can do this very soon.

Second, we’ve started designing a new feature which will give folks far more control over what they see from the accounts they follow. This will be a per-user setting and it will take a bit longer to put together but not too long and we’re already working on it. 

Lets all hope we do get something improved.