Social Media

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey says Twitter’s latest makeover isn’t set in stone

Eric Johnson
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Henry Dombey | Vox Media

Twitter has changed some things around, and some of its most active users aren't happy about it. In other news, water is wet.

To catch you up in case you don't spend all day on Twitter: This week, the site changed how @replies — the conversations among users — are displayed. As of Thursday, you can direct a tweet at specific people without their username counting against your 140-character-per-tweet limit.

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Sounds geeky, but power-user critics have said that the way this change was implemented makes it harder discern for whom a tweet is intended. And Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has jumped right into customer-service mode.

"Still working on this," he tweeted to author Zeynep Tufekci, who said the design change was hurting conversations. "Wanted to give more characters for replies and put more focus on text. Can't lose visibility of who's in."

"Getting a lot of that feedback," he acknowledged to the New York Times' Farhad Manjoo, who had similar concerns. "A few steps forward, some back."

"No need to be sorry," he said to BuzzFeed's Chris Geidner, who called Twitter "stupid" and then apologized. "Appreciate the passion. We're working hard & fast. Lots of trade offs. Some we'll get right, others wrong (& will fix)."

So, all of you people who are dissatisfied with Twitter, someone is working on it! Now go outside and enjoy the weekend, there are actual birds out there.

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By Eric Johnson, Re/code.net.

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