Disclaimer: I am currently implementing my 3rd standalone and crossplatform desktop twitter client for a customer.

A while ago Twitter decided to remove from your timeline your friends' twits that are in reply to someone you're not following yourself. Live example :

  1. I am following @jmplanche because I know him and appreciate him
  2. he twits "@Kreli4n cela avance. Fredo nous explique qu'il est membre de la SACD ... c'est encore mieux que le fils du patron à la culture"
  3. I am not following @Kreli4n so...
  4. ...that twit does not appear in my timeline, although I am following @jmplanche, I am interested in that particuliar twit and I have an extra-comment to make about it.
  5. I can still visit http://twitter.com/jmplanche to read it

This is plain ridiculous and counter-productive. There could be a bandwidth or server load issue behind but I don't care. Seen from a user's perspective, it's just ridiculous. While I am here, being able to DM someone only when you follow him/her is also a true pain in the ass. I can SMS whoever I want without restriction and I can't twit-DM ? Ooops.

As a twitter client implementor, the biggest lack in the API is the impossibility to create an account using the REST API. Of course, Twitter told me an API for that could be easily abused. Well, no, just make it a two-passes process with a server-side provided captcha as a reply to the first pass...