Twitter scraps threaded replies because almost everyone hated them

If you’ve been on Twitter recently, you have probably noticed that the company has implemented a new way to view conversations on the platform. These threaded replies were intended to make conversations easier to read and join, but in reality, it was a clunky mess that made everything slightly more difficult.

Now, Twitter is acknowledging that and is removing the feature from the platform. In a tweet describing the experience, the company notes that the new layout “wasn’t it,” and that they would be going back to the drawing board. In the same group of tweets, the company also noted that it was stopping development of its beta app, twttr.

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. https://t.co/pA4Yd0QfyW

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) December 3, 2020

It’s no secret that trying to have real conversations on Twitter can be difficult, especially for popular tweets. Even Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, struggled to have a conversation with Recode cofounder, Kara Swisher.

In a follow-up tweet, the company also notes some things it learned from the threaded replies feature: the layout was confusing, users still want to have conversations with more context, and that users want more control over basically everything.

Overall, this makes sense. The threaded replies feature was tough to navigate and personally, I found it exhausting, if not downright bad. Sometimes threads wouldn’t open, finding replies was difficult, and it was just overall a bad experience, leading to me spending less time on the platform. Which is kinda the opposite of what the company was going for.

What do you think? Glad to see Twitter rethinking the threaded replies feature? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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