Strangers in my Twitter feed

Twitter has been going into overdrive recently, updating their online experience to (I assume) catch up with the plethora of apps that make use of the service.

Since the site has become my only way to interact with the service I’ve liked a lot of the subtle improvements. Having the site update with new tweets has been meant I don’t have to continually hit F5. Lists offer a way to organize and share, similar to Facebook’s feeds.

The latest is re-tweeting on the site, something apps like twirl and tweetdeck have offered for sometime.  Even on those apps I prefer to pass the tweet along with a little tinkering instead of just hitting the re-tweet button – that’s just me.  But the way Twitter is implementing it on the site doesn’t sit great with me (see screenshot). It feels like strangers are popping up in my feed. Names and faces that I don’t know and my initial reaction is “I’m getting SPAM” until I’ve looked a little closer.

I applaud the efforts that developers are doing, and maybe I’ll get used to it, but for now I’d like a way to turn it off.