hkoba blog

プログラマーです。プログラミング言語ミーハーです。ツッコミ歓迎です。よろしくどうぞ(能代口調)

Dear @Twitter, please do not change my Fav into spam:-<

Dear @twitter

Today, I found you are experimenting a new feature that pushes my favorites into followers' timelines directly. I can easily imagine how such noise will bother, annoy and/or frustrate my friends/followers, so please do not introduce such feature.

If the feature turned on, how my Favs will annoy my friends/followers?

I've been using twitter for 5years. I don't tweet/retweet so many times, but instead I frequently use "Fav". Here is my stats:

  • 8,563 tweets(including retweets)
  • 103,362 favorites
  • in 1,629days.

As above, my fav is 10 times frequent than my tweets. If all (or part) of them are treated like retweets, I will be seen as an astonishingly chatty, noisy person. If such feature comes to my home, the only workaround for me is to stop sending Favs at all. This is very sad, so please discard such plan.

We've been using RTs and Favs as separate channels, so don't mix them up!

Currently, RTs are injected to followers timelines. We know it well. In contrast, Favs are notified only to the receiver and gently stay visible for others. We know it well too. This fundamental difference gave us freedom of choice of who to notify. If I think a tweet from others has enough reason to share/broadcast, I will retweet it simply. If I feel it is interesting, but broadcasting it is not good in some reason (ex. Not so accurate, controversial, or it's just a personal conversation...), I can just send a Fav.

Actually, I've expressed various meanings with my Favs, but I strongly cared whether they met my personal criteria of the Favs. That is:

  • I like it!
  • I agree with you!
  • It's very informative!
  • I stand for you!
  • Thank you!

And most importantly, I want to send above messages without bothering others. In other words, I want to express my personal respects without being loud like a spammer. As a Japanese, I feel this is very important. I don't want to be a shameless person in Japanese sense. I'm not sure you western people could understand this kind of feeling, but I hope you could.