Twitter has rolled back threaded replies because they made conversations harder to read. The vast majority of people who were included in a recent test of this feature considered threaded replies too difficult to use, prompting the company to pull the feature.
Threaded conversations were added to Twitter for iOS users in January before beginning a wider rollout in May. But now, Twitter is reverting back to its old system. People who were included in the test on iOS and the web complained about a new layout for replies with lines and indentations. Twitter hoped the solution would make it clearer who was talking to whom (and to fit more of the conversation in one view), but it received negative feedback from users.
Your conversations are the 💙 of Twitter, so we’re testing ways to make them easier to read and follow.
Some of you on iOS and web will see a new layout for replies with lines and indentations that make it clearer who is talking to whom and to fit more of the convo in one view. pic.twitter.com/sB2y09fG9t
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) May 5, 2020
“We asked and you let us know this reply layout wasn’t it, as it was harder to read and join conversations,” it wrote in a tweet published today. “So we’ve turned off this format to work on other ways to improve conversations on Twitter.”
On top of that, Twitter is also shutting down its experimental app, dubbed Twttr. The software was designed for testing new Twitter designs and experiments such as threaded conversations. “For now we’re turning Twttr off so we can work on new tests to improve the conversation experience on Twitter,” according to another tweet from the company.
Some learnings:
*the new look made convos harder to read & join – we’re exploring other ways to make this easier.
*you want more context about who you're talking to – we're working to add this.
*you want more control – we’re iterating on our convo settings.https://t.co/UzS08x4Jcf— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) December 3, 2020
People currently using twttr will lose access for now, according to the company, but Twitter is exploring potential next steps for the app as it develops future plans to test new products, a Twitter spokesperson tells The Verge.
Have you used threaded replies on Twitter? If so, what did you think of the feature?