Twitter has changed its API to allow external apps to create threaded chains of tweets. Instead of relying on the common practice of using @username, now a Twitter client can specify exactly which tweet is being replied to. While this sounds like a natural improvement, it is a huge risk for Twitter. The “magic” of Twitter has always been emergent from the combination of an extremely simple feature set and user behaviors. If I remember my Twitter history correctly, the current use of the @ sign was a convention first adopted by users, and then incorporated by the Twitter programmers. As Louis Gray Jesse Stay points out “this could very well mean the death of “@’s” on Twitter”. Magic is called that because we don’t know how it works. Nobody could have predicted how Twitter would strike such a chord with people. Now they are changing it in some fundamental ways. Alex Payne’s comment at the end of the official Twitter announcement may be a major understatement: “I can’t wait to see what you all do with it!”
(via Dave Winer.)
Update: Jesse Stay explores the potential demise of the @ on Twitter in more detail. Personally, I’m completely against this. I use the @ when I read Twitter to mentally connect the dots. It means much more than a direct or even implied link to a specific post. It is a figurative way of turning to someone and addressing them directly.
Update: Steve Gillmor has some additional comments on this change to Twitter’s API, and points to the latest Gillmor Gang where he interviews the author of Identi.ca. Steve says he makes a strong argument there to keep the 140 character limit. Back in the dBASE days, we used to say being partially compatible is like being a little bit pregnant.
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There are some potential uses for @ that I think still make it necessary. I’m going to do a follow-up post hopefully soon that explores that - I’d love to see them go away personally though. I think the client-side technology can take care of a lot of the problem.