The Next Web on Twitter’s major timeline update:

Twitter deserves our begrudging respect for its willingness to rethink the most basic building blocks of its service: tweets and timelines. Over the past year, Twitter has reordered your timeline with a new conversation UI and added images to a text-only medium. In the long-term, expanding the definition of your timeline is what’s best for Twitter as a mainstream platform, but doing so will upset hardcore users along the way.

Twitter doesn’t deserve our respect; respect is earned. When it comes to online services, respect is earned for doing things that improve a service for the users, rather than purely for the company that’s running it. It’s hard to imagine semi-random tweets dumped in timelines being cheered about on the streets. Precisely no-one I know likes the equivalent happening on Facebook, and so why assume Twitter will be any different?

Adverts: fine. Expanding tweets to link to content: fair enough. Adding stuff you never asked for in the first place: no. Respect? No bloody way.