The problem with the setting was that it didn’t scale and even if we rebuilt it, the feature was blunt. It was confusing and caused a sense of inconsistency. We felt we could do much better.

I still don’t understand where they’re getting that the feature was confusing or caused a sense of inconsistency from. If you used it, you saw every tweet from the people you follow. That seems pretty simple to me.

The post continues:

So here’s what we’re planning to do. First, we’re making a change such that any updates beginning with @username (that are not explicitly created by clicking on the reply icon) will be seen by everyone following that account. This will bring back some serendipity and discovery and we can do this very soon.

So wait, only @replies that aren’t generated by clicking the reply button will be shown? Meaning users now have to choose whether they want all of their followers to see a reply, or whether they want to link the reply to the tweet they’re actually replying to?

And that’s supposed to be making things LESS confusing? Riiiight.

@Biz concludes by saying

Second, we’ve started designing a new feature which will give folks far more control over what they see from the accounts they follow. This will be a per-user setting and it will take a bit longer to put together but not too long and we’re already working on it. Thanks for all the great feedback and thanks for helping us discover what’s important!

And wait a minute, did you just call this an important issue? I thought the feature wasn’t used by anyone and too confusing.

Putting that issue aside, this actually does sound like an improvement. What makes Twitter great is the ability of users to turn it into whatever they want it to be.

Of course, given Twitter’s history of down time, problems with scaling, and their recent pathetic attempt at a cover-up, I’m not going to be holding my breath on these new features.

@Biz says that Twitter learned a lot from this flap.

Judging from their continuing unwillingness to simply admit they lied about the reason initially and are simply unable to continue to support the feature, I’m not sure they learned anything at all.

====================

Update: Due to the uproar over the “small settings update” Twitter has published a new blog post saying:

The engineering team reminded me that there were serious technical reasons why that setting had to go or be entirely rebuilt—it wouldn’t have lasted long even if we thought it was the best thing ever.

In other words, “Remember how we told you we killed the option because it was ‘undesirable and confusing’? Well really we had to kill it off because we don’t have enough resources to run our service.”

Bottom line: Twitter lied. (& I’ll now be using the #TwitterLied hashtag)

Rather than admitting that despite taking on millions in venture capital, they still don’t have the resources needed to continue running their service properly.

As experienced as the Twitter founders are in social media, I’m a bit surprised they’d try and then admit to a cover-up of this magnitude. As always, their failure is now an even bigger story than it would have been if they’d have been open and honest with their users from the start.

====================

As many Twitter users will notice this morning, #fixreplies, #TwitterFail, & Goodbye People I are all trending topics.

For those of you wondering what this is all about, I’d point you over to Twitter’s blog post announcing the “small settings update” but in reality that wouldn’t help much.

Why? Because Twitter apparently doesn’t explain things very well.

Maybe it’s because they’re used to only using 140 characters, but whatever the reason, the result has been a mass of confusion in the Twitterverse.

Your Reply Tab Hasn’t Changed

Despite the many panicked tweets you may have seen on the subject,  you’re STILL able to see every message that mentions your Twitter name.

Whether you follow that person or not, if they @reply or drop your Twitter handle in a tweet, it will show up in your @replies tab.

What Twitter Broke

What Twitter actually changed, was a setting that they say many users didn’t use or understand in the first place. If you follow me on Twitter, and I @reply to someone that you don’t follow, you will no longer see my tweet.

Judging from my debate with @DanZarella (who by the way is a good guy to follow for Social Media info) this morning, it seems that some people may not understand why you would even WANT to see a one sided conversation.

Who Cares?

Personally, I find it’s the best way to discover new users that I would like to follow. If I see several people in my Twitter stream responding to a person I don’t know, chances are I’ve just found someone else useful to follow.

Also, there are a lot of questions being asked and answered on Twitter. And just like in grade school, even if I wasn’t the one asking the question, the response might be quite useful to me.

By eliminating the option, Twitter has essentially forced you to only be exposed to people you’re already following. Rather than frequently being introduced to new people to follow, Twitter has moved us into our own exclusive cliques.

Why Remove the Option?

The only reasoning for this change that Twitter gave was that:

” receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don’t follow in your timeline is undesirable. Today’s update removes this undesirable and confusing option.”

You know what was cool about options? They’re optional. As in if you don’t like the feature you can turn it off. If you do like it, great, use it!

So, rather than allowing users to determine whether the option was “undesireable” on their own, they’ve made the decision for you.

Rather than doing a better job of explaining the supposedly “confusing option” they just disabled it, pissing off the users who liked the option.

Heaven forbid Twitter would actually educate their users on the option, possibly allowing them to get even more value out of their service.

New Features!

But don’t worry! Twitter will

“be introducing better ways to discover and follow interesting accounts as we release more features in this space.”

Now, I’m no expert but if you have to create a new feature to replace the one you just killed off, maybe the old one had some value after all.

But just to get ahead of the curve, I’d like to put in a request to Twitter for a new feature. I’d really like to be able to follow ALL of the tweets of people I follow, not just the ones directed at people I already follow.

In other words, give us back the option you just took away.

Google actually made quite a few changes (and as usual JenSense has a great rundown of it all) but one section jumped out at me immediately.

The Content Guidelines section now reads:

“Sites with Google ads may not include or link to:

• Pornography, adult or mature content
• Violent content
• Content related to racial intolerance or advocacy against any individual, group or organisation
• Excessive profanity
• Hacking/cracking content
• Gambling or casino-related content
• Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia content
• Sales of beer or hard alcohol
• Sales of tobacco or tobacco-related products
• Sales of prescription drugs
• Sales of weapons or ammunition (e.g. firearms, firearm components, fighting knives, stun guns)
• Sales of products that are replicas or imitations of designer goods
• Sales or distribution of coursework or student essays
• Content regarding programs which compensate users for clicking ads or offers, performing searches, surfing websites or reading emails
• Any other content that is illegal, promotes illegal activity or infringes on the legal rights of others

It seems Google is no longer content to dictate what kind of content can appear on your site, they also now control who you can link to.

Now, Google is obviously well within their rights to set whatever kind of guidelines they want, it’d just be nice if they bothered to adhere to them as well.

While Google is more than happy to charge advertisers for AdWords placement they apparently don’t want their publishers to have anything to do with sites on topics such as the “sale of prescription drugs”:

AdWords doesn't have a problem with prescription drugs

or  the “sale of tobacco or tobacco-related products”:

Google knows cigarettes are tobacco products right?

Now, unless I’m mistaken, those blue underlined things that you click on are links right?

To be fair, these changes to the AdSense policies are new. I suppose it’s possible the AdWords team didn’t get the memo or maybe they haven’t finished rounding up all the advertising sites to cut ties with.

But I’m sure they’re working feverishly to stop accepting all that money from sites that sell Viagra or any other prescription drugs. I mean, Google wouldn’t expect you to follow a set of rules that they have abandoned themselves, in favor padding their bottom line… would they?

“the primary purpose of Twitpwr and not an important feature to me. I instructed our dev to remove.” and “thanks for pointing it out.”

Joel, you’re more than welcome. I appreciate the quick response and hopefully the trend of sites like Digg and TwitPwr accommodating content publisher’s rights will continue.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce TwitPwr.com.

TwitPwr Framejacking ESPN.com

As you can see in the image above, the site is yet another URL shortening “service” that frames other sites’ content.

I’ve written fairly extensively recently about the evils of this practice (known as framejacking) so I’m not going to rehash all those points here. But just so we’re all clear, framing another site’s content without the owner’s permission, is theft.

So, when I stumbled across TwitPwr today I was shocked. Not because another site was framejacking, but because the site is owned and operated by well known internet marketer Joel Comm!

Joel Comm = Content Thief?

Joel, according to his website, is a social media expert, a make money online entrepreneur, speaker and author who has written several books on all sorts of internet marketing related topics, including Twitter. As an author, you’d think he’d value the rights of content producers, right? Apparently not so much.

I tweeted Joel asking him why he thought it was ok to steal content from thousands of publishers and referred him to my post explaining why Diggbar’s framing activities were wrong. While Joel has yet to respond, Dan Nickerson, VP of Ideas at Infomedia Inc. and Joel Comm’s (quite literal) partner in crime, did.

Unfortunately, Dan apparently didn’t see the correlation between the Diggbar stealing content via framejacking and TwitPwr’s own framejacking activities.

“@Skitzzo you lost me.. removing the twitpwr frame would defeat the purpose of twitpwr.. No correlation between that article and twitpwr”

Dan went on to say

“the frame is what gives u more followers, traffic, pr and exposure for your twitpwr links” and “people use twitpwr because of the frame.. That’s why it’s popular, so your posts make no sense at all”

As most of you who have read my previous posts probably figured out, I really don’t care about users of framejacking sites, I care about the content publisher’s rights. Once Dan wrapped his head around that fact, he replied saying they

“hear your opinion. But I bet if we polled the owners of all the sites we are redirecting, 99% would say you’re nuts.”

You almost have to appreciate the gall it would take someone to essentially say “Yeah, I get that we’re stealing, but only 1% of our victims would care.” Unfortunately, the widespread uproar over the Diggbar suggests that a lot more than 1% of content publishers care about maintaining their copyrights.

Confronted with that fact, Dan began backpedaling and instead tried to justify the theft, saying

“I only said 1% wouldn’t think you were nuts, not agree with you. Site owners are getting backlinks and extra traffic from us too”

The links on member profile pages Dan mentioned do in fact link through to the sites that are being framed. TwitPwr also rewards users who drive a lot of traffic via their shortened URLs, an idea which I actually liked quite a bit.

However, while links and extra traffic are both nice things, TwitPwr could easily provide those perks without stealing content in the process.

Dan ended the conversation by claiming

“Twitpwr is built to help site owners/users”

Really, Dan? That’s the argument you’re going to go with?

You’re trying to help site owners by stealing their content?

Call me a skeptic, but I think you and Joel had slightly less charitable motive for framing sites with TwitPwr …

How does this help the content producers?

While TwitPwr could easily provide shortened URLs, profile links, and extra traffic without framing other sites. They could NOT, however, pimp Joel’s latest book at the top of every framed page.

In fact, Infomediainc.com states

“Twitpwr.com was dreamt up when Joel Comm and Dan Nickerson were trying to find a creative way to promote Joel’s book Twitter Power.”

So you tell me, what is Joel Comm and Dan Nickerson’s real motive for stealing your content?

Joel Comm's real motive for stealing your content

If you want people like Joel and Dan to stop stealing your content, I encourage you to Tweet this post using the button below and install the Frame Buster Wordpress plugin.

While there are certainly SEO concerns, content producers (read as bloggers, podcast producers, video producers, artists, and just about anyone with a website) across the web should be up in arms whether they care about SEO or not. Why? Because at the heart of this issue is one small question with some BIG implications…

Who owns the content?

To illustrate my point, look at the image I’ve created below:

click to see the live example (may take a few moments to load)

That’s right ladies and gentlemen, that’s 5, count them 5 layers of framing on top of the content’s source!

Rev3 was framed by Truveo which was framed by BurnURL which was framed by Digg which was framed by Owly which was finally framed by Stumbleupon, and those were just the ones that I came up with off the top of my head!

Sure Digg is making a big fuss about getting feedback and trying to do the framing the right way, but in the end, they’re still “taking your shit.” But they’re not, by any means, alone.

While the example above is extreme to be sure, it illustrates the issue quite well. Kevin Rose and the rest of the crew at Rev3 were the ones to create the content (in this case a video), but 5 other sites are trying to profit from it.  StumbleUpon, who has thus far escaped the same kind of wrath that Digg has faced, even goes so far as to include their own version of  frame-busting code that stops any other “toolbars” being displayed above their own.

They obviously don’t want their content being framed, and yet they seem to think it’s ok to do it to the rest of the web.

While this may not seem like a big deal to many users of the different sites, can you imagine the controversy that would ensue if the New York Times simply cut a story out of the Chicago Tribune and printed it in their paper? That of course would be plagiarism and wouldn’t be tolerated.

Why is the online world any different?

While the Web 2.0 world is all about sharing and interacting with content in new and exciting ways, that doesn’t mean content producers give up the rights to their content.

In the end the simple question has a pretty simple answer.

Who owns the content in the web 2.0 world?

The content producers.

It’s time Digg, StumbleUpon, and the rest of the web figure that out.

Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg.com does a videocast called Diggnation and just a couple weeks back he discovered that someone was framing HIS content. His reaction?

“Why is Truveo doing this? Holy shit they’re framing… oooh someone’s taking your shit”

(skip to 32:00)

In light of the much publicized release of the Diggbar, which essentially places a Digg frame around your content, the discussion beginning at the 32 minute would seem to be a bit embarrassing for the Digg founder.

A politician caught in this type of public hypocrisy would come up with some sort of “misremembered” excuse, but unfortunately for Mr. Rose, Digg would have already been working on the Diggbar (aka a framing tool of their own) when this video was filmed. That’s going to make it tough for Kevin to argue that his opinion has changed since then, or that he didn’t realize how beneficial framing can be, or some other BS excuse.

In light of this video, Rose is left with only one justification for his actions…

Money

I understand Digg is a company and they’re out to make money. I don’t fault them for that. What I DO fault them for is making money by, as Mr. Rose puts it, “taking your shit.” To have the audacity to then wrap it up as an experiment designed to improve user experience or claim that they’re doing it in an SEO friendly manner is simply unacceptable.

If you take care to not damage my door while breaking into my house to steal my property, you’re still a theif. And while Kevin certainly seems to be trying to implement the Diggbar the “right” way, the end effect is still the same… Digg is “taking your shit.”

hat tip to Clint Ecker of Officially Lucky

You can listen to the discussion here, or can watch the podcast below.

(Unfortunately due to technical issues only part of this week’s episode was recorded via Ustream.)

If you’d like to read even MORE about the Diggbar fiasco, here are a couple more solid articles on the topic:

• BurnURL - Another Worthless Framejacking Service
• How to Block the Diggbar

And just for grins, Delicious today provided a perfect example of why content publishers are getting screwed by the Diggbar. As you can see in the image below (via Daring Fireball) the top Delicioused URL of the day is a Digg framed page. So instead of the content source getting the SEO benefit and URL exposure from Delicious, the link points to Digg’s version of the page. Once again, Diggbar = FAIL.

Will the Diggbar Siphon Your Search Traffic?

But, that works out since I’m really pretty busy with a couple of my other projects.

Currently you can find me writing on FlippingEasy.com, a blog about buying, selling, and flipping websites. The blog just launched Nov 1st but is already doing well and I’m having a blast learning as I go.

After selling BloggingExperiment.com for 5 figures I realized that there was quite a bit of money to be made in launching and selling websites. A lot of people either don’t know how to get a site over that first initial hump or don’t care to take the time. I on the other hand love launching blogs and getting them established. It’s keeping up with them day after day the becomes an issue for me. So, I figure creating and selling blogs might just be the perfect match for me.

I’m also once again working on YourSportsFix.com, a site dedicated to MLB trade rumors. This has been an on-again-off-again project of mine that I just can’t seem to let go. Having 1,500 RSS and newsletter subscribers sitting there begging for you to monetize them has a way of regaining my attention. Anyway, I have a few new ideas on where to take it and I’m pretty excited to be back in the saddle and spending more time on it again. I’ve always loved the topic and I’ll hopefully be able to justify devoting more of my time to it on a regular basis.

I’ve got some exciting things planned for both of those sites so if you’re interested in the subject matter, or just like to read my writing, feel free to stop by and subscribe to either blog! Of course, you can also hit me up on Twitter or via the contact form linked at the top of the page as well.

Cheers!