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How can I let someone to follow me but not vice versa?
It doesn't work anymore. I used to be able to let someone to follow me without me following them. Now it seems that Follower must be also the followee as well. If I delete them on my "Following" list, they'll also get deleted from my "Followers" list. OK i'm getting a heading saying the Follow word. Can you please help?
I’m frustrated
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The best answers from the company
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We finally got this fix out the door; it was amazingly tricky from a code management perspective because of the number of moving parts. And, of course, it kept getting pushed because of needed stability work.
Please let us know if you run into bugs with the new functionality. There are additional enhancements we wanted to make (like showing the number of follower/following counts for the requesting user) that had to be cut because of performance reasons. They're still on the list tho'.
Glad folks are happy about the change; thanks for hanging in there as we fixed it.
7 people say
this answers the question
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This is definitely one of the more broken parts of our service. The fact that we force a reciprocal relationship for protected folks is definitely not easy to understand. While, I believe, the behavior has always been this way for protected folk, some changes a while back made this a bit more visible.
It is our intention to fix it. Unfortunately, it is a difficult change, so I don't have a specific timeline for the fix. I would guess it's days-weeks not weeks-months, however.
As soon as we can, we will change this.
The company and 5 other people say
this answers the question
The best answers from everyone
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OMG it is apparently fixed: http://help.twitter.com/index.php?pg=...
Yay Twitter!
I’m decoupling deadbeats right now.
6 people say
this answers the question
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Ping! Hey Twitter staff, it would be great to hear one of the following:
1 - Oh My God, we're so sorry. Didn't realize the problem. Fixing immediately
2 - Yes, sorry about that. We're aware of it and it's on our list of things to fix soon.
3 - Yep, unfortunately, it's a complex issue and we're not sure if we'll be able to do anything about it
4 - We appreciate your situation but this is the way we intended for Twitter to work and don't see that changing
5 - Go to hell, buddy
Given that you guys are actually active in other topics, I have to imagine that either you're completely missing replies to older topics or your implicit response equates to the last option.
Some sort of word from you would help all of us private account people decide whether we should go and set up a second account to deal with this problem, hang tight or dejectedly go find some other service.
I’m frustrated
6 people say
this answers the question
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"Wouldn't it be nice if we can also "Hide" a friend's tweets for a while?"
This would be an awesome little feature. Part of the problem I have is in blocking all of these people, I have to remember to add them later after their little game is over or they return from a conference I'm not attending. That of course will never happen faithfully.
Sure, I'll probably re-add those people organically when I remember that they exist on Twitter and I find that I miss their updates, but it's an inexact science that's a little stressful since 1) I have to block so many people and 2) doing so removes their ability to follow me.
"I think the problem may be because Twitter is trying to keep this application as simple as possible by not implementing too much features. But they need to also realize that this cannot compromise with the user experience!"
Totally. As any network grows, it's complexity must increase or restrict/self-select its usage patterns. Frankly though, this change for *only* private accounts actually made the system more complex and not less.
"Hello, can the twitter staff hear us?"
I'm not so sure about this and am scratching my head to figure out why no official reps have chimed in on this thread when they are active on others.
5 people say
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?hi caweena,
is your Twitter account also 'caweena'? If it is, my guess it's because your account is protected. In order for someone to follow you, you must also follow them in order for them to view your tweets (b/c you made your account protected)
Hope this helps.
1 person says
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Is that really true? If so, I have to say that it puts a MAJOR dent in the private account feature. There are a number of people who I know and don't mind if they follow my tweets, but for God sake I don't want to get theirs. (People use Twitter differently, no commentary at all about my feelings for the actual person.)
If this is the case, I would urge the Twitterarti to reconsider.
I’m disappointed
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Inappropriate?This (and the need to constantly make decisions about who to *allow*) made me turn the privacy function off. It's kind of a drag.
I’m kinda bummed.
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Inappropriate?I still have my privacy set to "on". Not sure why since the rest of my life is so public. But I'm funny that way. And I guess my philosophy is that I only allow people to follow me who I know and thus wouldn't mind following them.
I’m paranoid in strange ways.
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Inappropriate?"This (and the need to constantly make decisions about who to *allow*) made me turn the privacy function off. It's kind of a drag."
Oh I'm fine with that part. It's not like approving people is an urgent matter or anything. I just do the sweep anytime I'm actually on the Twitter site and notice there are requests pending.
Amy, I totally agree and am in the same boat as you. I *like* to be free to say anything I want on Twitter without prying eyes (hi Google) leering in.
It's a shame though that I have completely block access to **my** updates from people I know and like solely on the basis that I don't necessarily agree with or appreciate the way they are currently using Twitter (e.g. people who primarily use it to converse or to cross-post content from their other sites or who may be live-twittering a conference they are attending or who are participating in a Twitter-based MMORPG... Kill me...) -
Inappropriate?Hence, I had deleted my twitter account. BUT, they still keep my account around for another 6 months until they will completely delete it from their server. Twitter has serious privacy concerns to their users.
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?caweena, that's relevant to this thread how exactly? If anything I think Twitter's doing a fantastic job on protecting people's privacy. In fact, in my case, TOO fantastic of a job...
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Inappropriate?Jay Allen, I dont see why I can't add another message to my own thread. Twitter
still cannot fix the problem that I first pointed out, and I've had it. -
Inappropriate?Hi caweena. Actually, your best bet for getting attention to your concern about privacy is to start a new thread. If you do that, the Twitter reps will get a notification about it. Buried here in this conversation about Following it has less impact and less chance of being seen by someone who might be able to help you.
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Inappropriate?Caweena, I didn't mean to come across as attacking. I was actually genuinely confused. When I initially replied to this thread, I thought we shared the exact same problem. Even now as I read what you originally wrote, it still seems like the exact same problem: Twitter being overly aggressive about enforcing privacy.
So your previous message confused me because you now seem to be complaining about not *enough* privacy. Anyway, I didn't mean to come across as rude or anything. I was just looking for clarification.
But as Amy said, if you have a different issue now, start another thread. I'd be interested to hear the detals.
I’m sitting
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Inappropriate?Oh Amy, a point of order. So assuming I have the SAME problem as the one caweena posted, am I better off replying as I did or starting a new thread myself?
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Inappropriate?Ideally, we try to avoid duplicate posts in the system. But I can see how you might be tempted to start a new post when you feel like an existing one isn't getting further attention. You've actually caused me to see a big hole that needs to be addressed! We should have some kind of mechanism for users to nudge assigned reps when an old thread needs attention again -- particularly when there was never employee involvement to begin with. If there had been employee involvement in this thread, then that employee would receive notification when new replies are posted.
Hmmmm....
Thanks for the food for thought!
I’m pondering...
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Inappropriate?Hi Jay.
You can also click the "I have this question too" button at the top of this page.
That will boost this topic to the top of the active topics list in twitter.
I’m hoping this helps
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Inappropriate?Ah! thanks for the tips guys. Glad I could provide for your mental snack.
I’m satisfied!
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Inappropriate?Hey Twitter folks, this is starting to become a major problem with Ze's (@#^*@#) colorwars. As it is, I'm blocking (calling 'unfollowing' exactly what it actually is) a number of people every day **who are friends**, have requested to follow me and I've accepted. When they re-request, noticing that my updates are no longer accessible to them, what do I do? Email/IM/call to tell them that I can't allow them in because THEY post too much? That's just dumb.
Can I get an explanation of why things are the way they are and a response on whether or not you plan to change this? And please don't say it's for privacy reasons. If I am **asked** whether to allow someone to follow me and I accept, you have done your job and any lack of privacy is my own fault.
I’m annoyed...
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Inappropriate?I feel like I should more clearly state why this issue upsets me so much by saying that first and foremost, **I LOVE TWITTER**. It's the one single application that is open 100% of the time whether I'm casually surfing or working under deadline. It has fundamentally changed the way that I -- a consultant working from home by myself -- keep in touch with my friends and know what's going on in their lives and them mine.
So, in order to deal with the explosion of new uses for Twitter (including turning it into an full-scale MMORPG), I am faced with having to choose between four unpleasant possible actions:
1. **Block** everyone who uses Twitter in a fashion that I find distracting/unpleasant
2. Create and post to a second public Twitter account so that people can follow me unilaterally
3. Make my private Twitter account public
4. Stop using Twitter
The last two options are simply non-starters. The second is actually ideal for a number of reasons (which I'd be happy to explain if you like) but currently **extremely difficult** due to the fact that it requires re-auth on both the website and all clients and our mobile phones can only be used on a single Twitter account. This creates massive friction of interaction that makes Twitter much less pleasant to use.
I love Twitter and I want to be able to use it as much and as freely as I have in the past. I also want *others* to use it just like they have in the past, are today and will in the future, whether as a means of personal communication, reblogging and self-marketing, MMORPG or anything else they (or I) dream up. Yet, it is this single issue that is causing us private account users to punish others for how they use Twitter. That's just not right.
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?Offering the ability for users to create separate Twitter "channels" (called identies by the poster but I think that confuses the issue) would solve the problem above btw.
http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/to... -
Inappropriate?These replies are great btw! I think allowing user to define "channels" or groups for different access level would be a nice way to solve this problem. Hello, can the twitter staff hear us?
I’m hopeful for this possible solution
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Inappropriate?I hear ya... I've tried 1, and 3, and finally 4 on your list. The color war did drove me crazy too, so I had to block that person for posting too much. Sad because we don't have any ability to control other people's incoming tweets. Wouldn't it be nice if we can also "Hide" a friend's tweets for a while?
I think the problem may be because Twitter is trying to keep this application as simple as possible by not implementing too much features. But they need to also realize that this cannot compromise with the user experience!
I’m a frustrated ex-twitter
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Inappropriate?"Wouldn't it be nice if we can also "Hide" a friend's tweets for a while?"
This would be an awesome little feature. Part of the problem I have is in blocking all of these people, I have to remember to add them later after their little game is over or they return from a conference I'm not attending. That of course will never happen faithfully.
Sure, I'll probably re-add those people organically when I remember that they exist on Twitter and I find that I miss their updates, but it's an inexact science that's a little stressful since 1) I have to block so many people and 2) doing so removes their ability to follow me.
"I think the problem may be because Twitter is trying to keep this application as simple as possible by not implementing too much features. But they need to also realize that this cannot compromise with the user experience!"
Totally. As any network grows, it's complexity must increase or restrict/self-select its usage patterns. Frankly though, this change for *only* private accounts actually made the system more complex and not less.
"Hello, can the twitter staff hear us?"
I'm not so sure about this and am scratching my head to figure out why no official reps have chimed in on this thread when they are active on others.
5 people say
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Just cross-linking these because they seem to be very related: http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/to...
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Inappropriate?merlin mann refers to this feature as "a snooze button." hit it and you don't hear from that person for 2 weeks. it's a great idea. and actually, it wouldn't be too hard for someone to use the API to build a version of Twitter that has one. any takers? -
Inappropriate?Yeah, I'm with Jay. There are times when I'd just like to ignore someone for a while but not risk offending them by "blocking" them altogether.
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Inappropriate?I did not realize that unfollowing someone would cause them to no longer be able to see my postings if I have a protected account. Why are these two things even coupled? I will approve pretty much anyone I know to follow me; I just don't want strangers on there. But then sometimes I then unfollow those people because they are annoying or post too much. I guess I have been blocking those people unintentionally; I hope I didn't offend anyone!
I’m confused.
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Inappropriate?I'm one of the people Jay had to block in order to tune out noise (and I really don't mind in the least if Jay doesn't want to read my extreme non sequitor tweets). But it seriously bums me out that if Jay doesn't follow me, I can't follow him... He's one of my favorite people to read on Twitter.
So, because Jay can't tune out my noise without going invisible to me, that means if I want to follow him I would have to either:
A) completely change what I write on twitter to insure it was either silent, or totally of interest to Jay or
B) start a new twitter account that I never post to and use it just for following Jay and others who have private accounts.
I guess I could do B and actually set it up to show up in my email or something, or retweet to my account which Jay doesn't follow, or something.
But really, it would be a whole heck of a lot easier if private accounts could separate followers from following the same way my non-private account does.
I agree with Courtney above that the two should NOT be coupled. Because Twitter has turned into a service which almost everyone uses in very different ways, it just doesn't make sense to make one feature dependent on another. I'm not saying twitter needs *new features* or *more features*, I'm saying that by keeping a minimal feature set and keeping each feature distinct from the others, Twitter makes it possible to use the service in *more* ways.
Please consider changing this. I really miss Jay's tweets, man.
I’m vexed
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Inappropriate?I also think some kind of user defined filters would greatly improve the utility of twitter. I've been wrestling with trying to find a way to bulk follow/unfollow my news feeds, for example. (I wouldn't want to do this with human users, as it would generate email's every time I re-followed).
This doesn't address protected updates, but I've considered generating comma separated lists of users to plug into tweetscan's core groups function as an awkward work-around.
http://www.tweetscan.com/core.php
I’m not a very good programmer, yet.
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Inappropriate?Ping! Hey Twitter staff, it would be great to hear one of the following:
1 - Oh My God, we're so sorry. Didn't realize the problem. Fixing immediately
2 - Yes, sorry about that. We're aware of it and it's on our list of things to fix soon.
3 - Yep, unfortunately, it's a complex issue and we're not sure if we'll be able to do anything about it
4 - We appreciate your situation but this is the way we intended for Twitter to work and don't see that changing
5 - Go to hell, buddy
Given that you guys are actually active in other topics, I have to imagine that either you're completely missing replies to older topics or your implicit response equates to the last option.
Some sort of word from you would help all of us private account people decide whether we should go and set up a second account to deal with this problem, hang tight or dejectedly go find some other service.
I’m frustrated
6 people say
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?This is definitely one of the more broken parts of our service. The fact that we force a reciprocal relationship for protected folks is definitely not easy to understand. While, I believe, the behavior has always been this way for protected folk, some changes a while back made this a bit more visible.
It is our intention to fix it. Unfortunately, it is a difficult change, so I don't have a specific timeline for the fix. I would guess it's days-weeks not weeks-months, however.
As soon as we can, we will change this.
The company and 5 other people say
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Thanks very much for the reaction.
Is it any easier to provide the feature requested here: http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/to... ? In case it is, it would give some of us a workaround while you're working out how to fix this problem. If each user is able to have several personas, we can choose which persona (eg, family, friends, work, ...) a certain person is able to follow (and reciprocate). Then the problem with trying to manage who does/doesn't follow our one and only username becomes less acute.
Of course, the logic of forcing reciprocal relationships in private accounts still seems to be extremely weak, especially when this is not the case for public accounts .
I’m looking forward to the solution, whatever it may be.
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Inappropriate?Thanks for the response, Jason. We all love our Twitter and it's good to know that this issue is on your radar as well!
I’m happy & patient
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Inappropriate?Jason, you rock \m/ Thanks so much for the answer. That was exactly what I needed to know. I can totally suffer it out days/weeks rather than upending my entire Twitter account or usage if, for example, this was permanent.
By the way, was this thread invisible to you guys? Amy mentioned that they might want to do a bit of UI/featureset work to make older threads with activity pop up on the radar but I didn't want to start a new thread unless absolutely necessary.
Thanks again for the reply, sir. -
Inappropriate?Thanks for the reply Jason! I feel much better to know that at least the Twitter staff is acknowledging the problem. I hope you guys can fix this ASAP as this is apparently a huge usability problem.
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Inappropriate?Yeah - I didn't see this thread during my regular crawls of Satisfaction. That's not to say it's definitively their fault; I just may have missed it. But I generally keep an eye out for threads with this many responses.
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Inappropriate?Been a week since the last reply and this problem is becoming increasingly annoying. Please rectify the situation.
I’m pissed
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Inappropriate?Hi John,
I think goldtoe responded appropriately above:
It is our intention to fix it. Unfortunately, it is a difficult change, so I don't have a specific timeline for the fix. I would guess it's days-weeks not weeks-months, however.
It looks like they are working on things and we should give them sometime to fix the problem now that as customers we've gotten through to them. I think Point #3 of the Customer-Company Pact is very useful: Let's give twitter the time to solve this problem right. They've said days-weeks (and knowing how development works out, weeks is always the better bet ;)) and so we should get back on them in week or so to see if they are still working on it.
2 people say
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?+1 Scott.
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Inappropriate?Glad to hear this is in the queue. I'm holding off on letting a dozen people follow me because I don't want to forcibly follow them.
I’m frustrated but hopeful
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Inappropriate?Very happy this is being worked on. I have about 20 people I'm being rude to because I don't want to have to follow them.
I’m waiting patiently
1 Comment Add a comment
This answers the question
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Yep, me too. I've started just holding friend requests from people who fit into the above category. That way, when this is resolved, I won't forget about all of the people I've denied. -
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Inappropriate?I'm anxious for the feature as well. However, it actually was addressed. If you look at the top of the page you'll see "The best answer from the company" in which goldtoe says:
"It is our intention to fix it. Unfortunately, it is a difficult change, so I don't have a specific timeline for the fix. I would guess it's days-weeks not weeks-months, however."
That was 25 days ago which is still, arguably, within his estimate of "days-weeks". I know they were dealing with a pretty big caching issue last week so that's probably held them up as well. I also know how it goes with product development and that it generally takes longer than you think to get new features out the door.
Perhaps goldtoe can come back and give us an update on the ETA of this feature?
I’m looking forward to this but trying to be patient
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Inappropriate?Addressing system stability did cause this to get pushed a bit. But it has been worked on and there is more work to do. I don't have guidance on the launch of this change but it is in our active list of projects.
1 person says
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Thanks for the update, goldtoe!
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Inappropriate?any update on the progress of this fix? It was supposedly "days-weeks not weeks-months" about a month ago
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?Yes, this has obviously slipped some. Largely, this is because we are 100% focused on trying to scale the site and restore services to all users.
However, we've managed to complete most of the changes needed to improve the experience for protected users. We've already tested a lot of this in our development environment but there is more work to do.
Since my last date prediction turned out to be wrong, I'm loathe to make another one. Especially since we have a lot of trouble left to deal with on the operations side.1 Comment Add a comment
This answers the question
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Definitely understandable, Jason. Thanks much for the update. Good luck with everything over there!
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Inappropriate?Still watching this thread....hoping. Understand that other things take priority though. -
Inappropriate?Related question to this thread: i've been following someone in my field for quite a while. He seems this week to have protected his profile, so though I still show in his list of followers and he still shows in my list of "following," the tweets that show up in my list all say "My updates are protected. Ask to follow me."
But when I click the "ask to follow me" link it says the guy is already in my list. I assume this means I have to UNfollow him, then re-request to follow him again. But from the sound of this thread, if he allows me to follow him, he'll have to follow me, too. I'm sure he's not interested in following all the professionals who are interested in what he has to say, so doesn't want to follow everyone who asks.
Guess I'm not saying anything new here, just pointing out that this is problematic enough in a personal or recreational situation, but it *really* doesn't work when people are following each other for *professional* reasons and someone's likely to have a large number of followers whom s/he's not particularly interested in following him/herself.
Glad to hear this problem is being worked on. :)
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?I would guess it's because they've had their hands full with all the scaling & restoring work they've had to do recently. Being part of a tech startup myself I can understand how the best intentions sometimes have to be set aside when you find yourself needing to deal with mission-critical issues.
That being said, an update would be much appreciated. Is this still on a short-term roadmap? Has it been indefinitely postponed?
I’m hopeful
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6 people say
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Great news! Many thanks to Twitter. Now I can finally mobilise groups of friends, colleagues and relatives to set up their own private Twitter groups to coordinate their activities without having to 'go public'.
I’m stopping following a whole series of people I didn't want to follow
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Inappropriate?Fantastic. HUGE improvement. Also, the friend request page has been greatly improved. Nice work, Twitter. Thank you!
I’m just cleaned up my following list
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Inappropriate?That's great news! It must have been tricky to implement; I'd got used to the idea of it being impossible.
Thanks, Twitter!
I’m delighted! :-))
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Inappropriate?Tremendous! With this fix and the increased stability of the service in general, Twitter is really starting to look shiny again.
Thanks, Twitter team!
I’m excited
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Inappropriate?We finally got this fix out the door; it was amazingly tricky from a code management perspective because of the number of moving parts. And, of course, it kept getting pushed because of needed stability work.
Please let us know if you run into bugs with the new functionality. There are additional enhancements we wanted to make (like showing the number of follower/following counts for the requesting user) that had to be cut because of performance reasons. They're still on the list tho'.
Glad folks are happy about the change; thanks for hanging in there as we fixed it.
7 people say
this answers the question
1 Comment Add a comment
This answers the question
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Jason, you and the Twitter team have my very heartfelt thanks. This is an awesome day.
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Inappropriate?By the way -- Crystal started a new topic regarding the change to protected profiles.
I suggest that we log any bugs / issues that we encounter (if any) with this protected profile change in the other thread, so they'll be easier to find and track.
The new thread is here:
http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/topics/protected_profile_changes.
I’m happy and I know it. *clap-clap-clap*
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This answers the question
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Good suggestion, mdy.
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