Twitter is a great social network in many ways. But it can be an incredible pain in the ass to piece together conversations, especially conversations you’re not a part of. So Twitter has introduced something you may not have noticed: A thin blue line, connecting conversations.
Really, it looks like this:
And it’s about as inoffensive as these things get. It mostly allows you to draw a link between people conversing. It’s also really, really hard to find implemented, because most people don’t have conversations on Twitter: Twitter is pretty much a public version of leaving a voicemail because you don’t want to talk to somebody, but do need to convey information or pithy thoughts about Breaking Bad.
This has not, of course, stopped people from freaking out:
Honestly, once people calm down they’ll probably find they prefer it. Essentially all this really does is take the scrolling, clicking, and reordering out of looking at how people talk on Twitter. Piecing together some conversations without the help of apps like Storify is basically like living through Memento, except more annoying and without the wife-murdering. It’s also usually not worth the effort.
In short, Twitter has introduced a tool to make their network easier to use and your friends’ tweets a bit easier to understand. Why the hate? Is it because there is no Blue Line on a subway system that isn’t a circle of hell?
(Image courtesy of fotoeins on Flickr)