There’s a bit of a furore in the Twitter community today after a post on the company blog announced a change to the @reply system – the second in as many months, as it goes.

Until today, your account will only have been notified of @replies when both parties involved in the tweet were people you followed – unless you changed an option in the menus to allow them to appear, even if you only knew one party involved.

Now, for reasons of confusion, which that last sentence might have demonstrated, the powers that be at the microblogging service have decided to remove the option. The community is not happy. The community is rebelling.

There are channels set up like #fixreplies and #twitterfail where people are currently voicing their opinion to the point where it’s become the most discussed topic on the service today.

Already there’s been a response from Twitter CEO Evan Williams who tweeted:

“Reading people’s thoughts on the replies issue. We’re considering alternatives. Thanks for your feedback.”

Personally I’m not too fussed either way but removing options that used to exist are rarely a good thing to do, particularly when it was well hidden anyway where it would cause little confusion. Still, I’m thinking Twitter will change it’s mind on this one.

(via Twitter Blog)