Twitter changed its design to show tweets in a popup window. Many users, however, did not like the new feature.
The new feature is called popup tweets. Before, Twitter users clicked it would just slide out to display inline. Now it pops open an entirely separate modal to show you a single tweet.
The new popup model led to confusion. Some users accidentally unfollowed people.
I keep on almost accidentally unfollowing people because of Twitter’s stupid popup bollocks
— Mermaid Princess (@Pastel__Mermaid) February 8, 2016
Others found that posts are difficult to read now.
Wow that new @twitter POP UP box sure makes threaded tweets/stories hard to read, huh. What a piece of shit. Why do you do this, Twitter?
— Angie Manfredi (@misskubelik) February 7, 2016
Twitter needs to revert this pop up thing. It takes too long to view replies
— Ainsworth (@AinsworthA) February 8, 2016
Initially Twitter wanted to let users keep track of conversations with ease. “Tweet conversations pop out with a single click-no more losing your place,” the company wrote introducing the change. But users started to express criticism over this feature in the conversation following the company’s announcement, and later the wave of negative feedback spread further.
This feature was introduced when Twitter was already under fire from critics. Buzzfeed reported last week that Twitter planned to roll out changes this week to user timelines by organizing tweets with an algorithm instead of in the standard, chronological order. Facebook redesigned its timeline in this way long ago.
Twitter users didn’t seem happy because they see Twitter as a tool for a real-time conversation. The most popular US trend on Twitter as of Saturday afternoon was #RIPTwitter. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had to respond by promising to keep the social media network in real-time. However he did not deny the upcoming changes.
Twitter is live. Twitter is real-time. Twitter is about who & what you follow. And Twitter is here to stay! By becoming more Twitter-y.
— Jack (@jack) February 6, 2016
Edited by Sara Macham