Twitter’s brief experiment with @ replies did not go well

Twitter's brief experiment with @ replies did not go well. Twitter's iOS app experienced a subtle but important change Friday — the old style of replies, which required placing the "@" character in front of the username of the person you're replying to, was briefly gone, and replaced with the text "replying to" above the tweet. Twitter quickly reverted the change, explaining on its Support account that it was an "experiment" which "accidentally" went out to all iOS users. Today, an experiment around replies accidentally went out to everyone on iOS briefly. Upside, we got helpful feedback - we’re listening! — Twitter Support (@Support) December 9, 2016 The new approach to replying had some unintended consequences; since the @ replies didn't count against Twitter's 140-character limit, you could add as many as you wanted in one tweet — and spam all those people in the process. Twitter explained in September that it's testing this feature with a small subset of users. However, now that it rolled out for everyone on iOS, the users were not impressed. got mad at the twitter update but then i realized they might just be trying to confuse trump and i chilled — Desus Nice (@desusnice) December 9, 2016 Don't worry folks, it's over. For now.