Why is Twitter’s latest change to @ replies really spinning folks up? It’s about visibility and discoverability. No longer will folks like me be discovered via direct replies. That means that newer Twitter users, who often only get noticed via folks replying to them are now invisible to the rest of us.

How are people already combatting this effect?

1) Prefixing @replies with any odd character. Example: !@tojosan
2) Mentioning folks they’d like to be discovered in the body of the tweet. Example: Be sure to follow @tojosan
3) Beginning the messages with a hashtag. Example: #stl @tojosan, be sure to come to the Stable later.
4) Include hashtags in tweets; folks following a tag will still see those tweets. Example: @tojosan, love your photographic work at #SXSW.

What’ll I imagine is the use of #followfriday, which was tapering off, is going to be in full swing. There are follow type tags for other days as well that may come into greater prominence.

On my part, I’m going to just to put the person I’m replying to in the middle of the tweet, as naturally as possible.

What I hope would happen as well though is that folks make better use of tags on their conversations when it’s relevant. For example, if you and @geosteph are talking about NASA, why not tag some of the tweets #NASA. This would highlight to folks and attach some meaning to who they are or what they are interested in.

The tag for discussion on Twitter is #fixreplies. Join the conversation.
Feel free to rant here, leave suggestions, or share your experience already with this change.

Twitter Hashtags and Groups « American Pai
“As your list of friends grows on Twitter, the amount of messages that scroll across your screen increases exponentially. Pretty soon it becomes impossible to catch messages directed your way in real-time. Ultimately you have to resort to backtracking or using a search tool like TweetScan (R.I.P Terraminds!). Increasingly members of the Twitter community are demanding better ways to filter and group all of this information. One of the new solutions has been Twitter Hashtags and channels.”

Yes, Twitter Hashtags are becoming more widely adopted. I have used them more often, especially for tweets regarding Austin, where I vacationed.  Hashtags is a site that tracks the use of the # symbol in Twitter posts. It’s really that simple but that one act provides a wonderful opportunity. That’s the opportunity to follow all of the posts about a specific # tag.

In my case, I tagged posts with #Austin where I provided links to pictures and blog posts, even people.  At the outset one might think there is little extra value here so far.  Hashtags turns that into tweets that users can subscribe to.

Now a user can go beyond following real life friends without having to add lots of strangers on Twitter.  Hashtag will send those tweets with the # tag, say #Austin, right to your door Twitter box.

So this sounds great right? There are downsides though.

1) # tags interrupt the conversation – yes, as they are still new, when used, followers may inquire about their use and the conversation strays; the tags also interrupt literally by breaking up the flow of words and letters.  Several of my followers have actually complained to me.

2) #tags are seen as link bait – because the tags intended purpose is to allow Twitter messages to be found by engines such as Hashtags, your Twitter buddies might feel put off that your post is more to draw attention to you and your links than be real conversation.  This is a valid concern in my opinion. I’ve already seen that use where no attempt is made to engage others.  Those tweets stand out often by a lack of any other text in the message.

3) #tags waste space – and there’s a shortage of that built right into Twitter. This is probably the most reasonable argument against their use. Paisano and others agree that it’s time for Twitter to bring on tagging outside the message.

I’ll keep using # tags for now, but only where it really serves a purpose.  Already evident is the use of the # even when the post has no intrinsic value about the tagged word.

What will you do? Use them? Abuse them? Ignore them? Drop your friends that use them?  What will come next? Are you working on the next best thing for Twitter?