Well, well, well. Seems it's all been kicking off today with all this 'twitter @replies' stuff.

Basically, the twitter people have taken away the option for users to see all @replies - having them hidden by default. See: Twitter puts a muzzle on your friends.

Folk went mental! And it didn't take long for a #fixreplies hashtag to get thrown in the mix for users to show their anger.

But now it seems the people at twitter are (kind of) back-tracking by making all @replies display by default (well, sort of I think?). See: We learned a lot.

Now. I had replies turned off by default when the replies were directed at people I don't follow, so this is going to be a pain in the bottom for me now. Meh!

I think the (or a) solution should be a new 'tag/prefix' for dealing with tweets where you wish to include a user in the tweet, but you are not actually replying to them. Semantically, that would also tick a box as I feel that the @ method was getting used in a 'not really replying' sense.

So ...

A user reply tweet:
"@person Yes I agree" (not shown)

A user included tweet:
"+person has just come in the room wearing ear-muffs! He is _so_ crazy! ROFLCOPTER" (would be shown)

Therefore: 2 birds, 1 stone ...

I find most replies to be relevant only to those involved - one to one, whereas a new prefix would mean the avenue for discovering new people to follow is still open, and everyone is happy. Cool beans?

Next!