There are two topics that pop up in the tech world so often that most bloggers and journalists are burnt out on them. Those would be Facebook and Twitter. But when a Web service takes off like Twitter, you can’t just ignore it. That’s particularly true when the Web service makes a change that irritates its user base. Twitter has done that.

I’ll try to explain the brouhaha. Twitter is a service that lets you broadcast short messages (140 characters or fewer) to a network of people who “follow” you. You can follow anyone on Twitter and stay up to date with that person’s messages. There are other settings that let you limit who can see what you have to say, but there’s no need to get into that.

One of the functions in Twitter is the @reply feature. This lets users direct a message to a particular Twitter member. It isn’t a private message. If User A sends User B a reply and User C is following both A and B, then User C can see the reply message. But if User C only follows User A, C would not see any @reply messages sent from A to B. That’s Twitter’s default setting.

Until recently, Twitter had another setting users could choose to activate. Using the same example above, if User C only followed User A, C could still see A’s @reply messages to B. But C would not see B’s responses. In other words, C would witness half of a conversation — A’s half.

Twitter seems to think this feature confuses new users by cluttering up the Twitter feed. As a result, Twitter has discontinued the feature. Now you can only see @reply messages if you follow both parties. But this really limits Twitter’s usefulness. One of the reasons I like to use Twitter is that it introduces me to smart and funny people I otherwise wouldn’t notice. I might visit a stranger’s Twitter profile after seeing someone I follow respond to that person. It gave me the chance to make new contacts. Without seeing these replies, I may never even know about someone who I’d otherwise want to follow.

I’m not the only one puzzled by Twitter’s new policy. Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch has blogged about the problem and reports that Twitter executives are aware of the issue and are considering alternatives. Ben Parr at Mashable is also keeping an eye on the story. Meanwhile, Matt Asay at CNET suggests Twitter reincorporate the old @reply settings as a paid feature — direct all ire toward him.

I understand Twitter is a free service and that as a user I should have no real sense of entitlement to any particular feature. But I still find it strange that Twitter should do away with a feature that you had to change manually to activate if the reason behind really was to make things less confusing for new users. The action and motivation don’t seem to match up.

Learn more about Twitter and social networking at HowStuffWorks.com:

How Twitter Works
How Online Social Networks Work
How Facebook Works