Home > Ideas > Twitter’s new Retweet Feature: I found a flaw (finally)

Twitter’s new Retweet Feature: I found a flaw (finally)

November 19th, 2009 admin

I posted this heavily clicked review yesterday of retweets and I admitted that it was still pretty incomplete. At the time of writing, I was convinced that retweeting was for the better but, as Twitter notes, it’s still in beta.

Today, I found a flaw in people that are being retweeted. I noticed this in the stream.

The photo in question was this where my friends Drew and Robert Scoble retweeted two accounts that I don’t really care for and don’t want them to show up in my Twitter stream. Here’ a screen grab.

So Dave Winer and the Aflac Duck both show up and were retweeted by friends. At this time, you can only disable disable retweets from a person you’re following. So, I can go to Robert Scoble’s page and disable seeing ALL of the retweets he does of other users. This would be cool if it was someone I follow who retweets CONSTANTLY but this isn’t the killer feature and I think it’s more important that I am able to go to any user’s page and configure that person from never showing up in my stream. I send out this tweet:

But no, if I go to the Aflac Duck’s twitter page, there’s no option that says I never see his tweets in my stream no matter what person retweets him. This is a pretty major flaw as the top 25 celebrities on Twitter has no business showing up on my main stream but with this new feature they will day after day because each of them have millions of followers.

Then, I try this and all is right in the world but it’s simply a band-aid for a larger problem.

Blocking a person on Twitter will prevent their tweets from showing up in my stream no matter who retweets them. Yes, this works but it’s not a good solution because Twitter doesn’t have an active “list” of people you’ve blocked. Instead, you just have to keep a mental note of this and go to their pages specifically to unblock them. All social networks and IM clients have an easy list that you can access of people you’ve blocked but Twitter doesn’t.

I think this is something that will come later and since the product is in beta, there’s no need to stomp my feet and whine. If you see a lot of tweets from Britney Spears in your stream, just remember that you have to block her specifically or she’ll show up every day as friends retweet her.

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  • vitanga
    I actually tried your "solution" and it didn't work for me. For testing purposes, I blocked both @aflacduck (RTed by @drew) and @mattcutts (RTed by @Scobleizer) and the RTs still showed up on my stream.

    BTW, you CAN get a list of people you've blocked by going to http://twitter.com/blocks/blocking.xml and using your Twitter username and password.
  • Guest
    I actually tried your "solution" and it didn't work for me. For testing purposes, I blocked both @aflacduck (RTed by @drew) and @mattcutts (RTed by @Scobleizer) and the RTs still showed up on my stream.

    BTW, you CAN get a list of people you've blocked by going to http://twitter.com/blocks/blocking.xml and using your Twitter username and password.
  • Thank you for the reply. So I've heard another person who said that as well over email so I'm not sure what the difference was. I did just doublecheck and it worked for me. Not sure what is different.

    Regarding the blocked list, I wanted to add that it's not an official feature that's included in Twitter's Web Interface. Meaning, I can't go to settings and see who I'm blocking. An XML or API call isn't the same cause most users can't do that. A web developer did contact me and said we should build a site that shows you who you're blocking but at t his time, normal users can't get the info easily unless they know this tip you added.
  • Cal
    It's a clever idea, but I find myself not checking out the browser version much anymore because it's like the public timeline at this point. I think retweets are being given too much power, in a way. It's just filling my screen with shit I don't care about, so I'm losing interest.
  • I agree. If blocking is supposed to be the way around this; then the block feature has a way to go itself before all is right. Of course, the problem with this is - even if you may not want to see this person's tweets in your streams, if you block them and they reply to you (which you might not have a problem with) you won't see those either.

    Of course, this is a small flaw, and I do hope that twitter finds a way around it soon.
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