To everyone developing cool Twitter client applications, I have a couple of requests:
- Give me an option of hiding @username tweets if the username in question is not in my friends list.
- Make the @username in the tweet a link to said username’s twitter page so I can easily see what the response is to (if I decide not to block the @username tweets as given the option in #1).
I’d actually use these options differently in different applications/contexts. On my desktop (using Twitterrific) I’d want the link behavior. On my mobile (using Tiny Twitter) I want to exclude them completely.
For #1, Twitter already does this. If @username is not a shared friend, it’s not in your update feed. (This is new functionality — it appeared last week.)
For #2, there is too much entropy in @ for this to be truly successful. For example, @craig would be a useless link, but @chockenberry would work. In Twitterrific, that’s the reason that double-clicking on the tweet takes you to the with_friends page — there’s usually enough context there to figure out who @ is and what they are talking about.
-ch
And here I thought my friends were becoming more thoughtful in their tweeting behavior. 😉
I’ve been thinking more about #2 – I think if the tools treated this consistently, the usage would adjust accordingly.