Aug 13, 2008 2:03:00 PM | twitter Are Twitter Replies Fundamentally Broken?

Are Twitter Replies Fundamentally Broken?

Has anyone noticed that Twitter replies are fundamentally broken? Or, I should say, at least the "Replies" *tab* is jacked.

This isn't another "Twitter is down" post -- this is about a feature that doesn't work as it's designed.

As far as I can tell, replies to me only end up in my "Replies" tab if my Twitter account name (@bucchere) is the first token in the tweet. Yet a lot of people reply to multiple people or use the "@" notation in context, e.g. "I'm playing tennis with @bucchere."

That "reply," although it's clearly got my name in it, won't end up under my replies tab. Oops.

In The Social Collective, any time an @ token is found, it stores the message as a reply. Isn't that how Twitter should work as well?

Has anyone else noticed this? Is anyone else annoyed like I am by this obviously broken "feature?" WTF?

There is a workaround, but it's kludgey. You can use Summize (now located at search.twitter.com) to search for @bucchere. I did this, then ingested the resulting RSS feed into Google Reader and now I go there instead of to my Replies tab in Twitter. FAIL.

[Update: This is now fixed. Yay, Twitter!]

Written By: Christopher Bucchere