It was earlier this year when Twitter had introduced a threaded tweets feature to the platform where replies to a tweet would be threaded similar to how you see replies of other platforms like Reddit. The objective behind this was to make it easier for users to see who commented on a post and to whom they were replying. Also Read - Twitter's rumoured Blue subscription service to finally let you undo tweets
Seemingly, the feature was not well received among the Twitterati and the company has decided to roll back the feature. Also Read - Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey donates Rs 110 crores to help India fight COVID-19 second wave
As per Twitter, many of its users posted that they found the threaded tweets feature cumbersome as it made it harder to find conversations and join them. Users also complained that it was not particularly contextual, as to who you are communicating with, and also felt they didn’t have much control over their responses. Also Read - How to silence autoplay videos on Facebook and Twitter
We’re constantly testing and working on ways for Twitter to better serve the public conversation. Since last year, we’ve tested new ways to make conversations easier to follow and join on our prototype app twttr, and more recently on Twitter too. 🧵
— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) December 3, 2020
Regarding the issue, Twitter released a statement that reads, “Your feedback shapes Twitter. We asked and you let us know this reply layout wasn’t it, as it was harder to read and join conversations. So we’ve turned off this format to work on other ways to improve conversations on Twitter.”
What this means for Twitter users is that if you now reply to posts you will no longer be able to see your replies in the threaded format.
The company also announced that it’s turning off its beta app called twttr which was designed to experiment on the threaded replies format. Existing twttr users will lose their access for now but the company says it’ll work on the feature to improve it.
At the moment it is not clear whether Twitter will be reworking the treated conversations feature on its platform or introduce an entirely new system for users to reply.
