The World Series of Poker begins today in Las Vegas. For the poker fan, it's a chance to see the best in the world contend with amateurs from all over the world.

If there's a problem with the WSOP, it's that there's so much of it. It runs for almost two months, has over 50 events and involves thousands of players. Twitter user and poker pro Joe Sebok has created a great new tool for following all the action using Twitter.

Annie Duke) as well as amateurs. You can filter the tweets to see updates about a specific WSOP event or from specific players.

When you're trying to follow an event like a poker tournament where thousands of people might be playing at hundreds of tables, a tool like this let's you see what's going on through the players' eyes. It's a whole new way of seeing the game.

Just to be clear, Twitter is not making a television show. Some Hollywood folks are developing something that leverages Twitter and they are extremely enthusiastic as evidenced by all the media hubbub yesterday and today. We have little to do with their efforts but we wish them success.

Like the thousands of apps being built around Twitter, there is a growing interest from the entertainment and news industry. We see these projects and others as yet another way the ecosystem is enriched for everyone who uses Twitter.

The web is abuzz today with talk of a "Twitter TV show." I'm even getting folks asking me if they can audition. Indeed, there are a lot of interesting developments happening in the television space—MTV, G4, CNN, E! and various independent production companies are all leveraging Twitter for fun new projects. There are probably a bunch we don't even know about yet.

Is There An Official Twitter Show?

There is no official Twitter TV show—although if there were it would be fun to cast! In dealing with networks and production companies we sometimes have simple agreements. Regarding the Reveille and Brillstein project Hack The Debate showed us how Twitter could make television interactive and possibly even have a democratizing effect on the medium. The power of Twitter was harnessed to create new, compelling, and engaging programming. CNN was an early innovator with Twitter too. Our openness made it all possible.

Twitter's open approach might have the power to transform television—the dominant communications receiver worldwide. We're very excited to see where these experiments take us.

Last week we launched full, two-way SMS for Vodafone customers in New Zealand. The shortcode for Twitter in NZ is 8987 or TWTR. As always, Twittering over SMS is a standard rate message or deducted from your bundle and receiving notifications is free. If you're not a Vodafone customer, don't worry—we're working on it.

What About Australia?

We know from experience that Australian Twitterers are a passionate bunch. Hopefully this good news will not have a negative impact on Trans-Tasman relations. We promise that Twitter loves Australia and we will be turning on full, two-way SMS in your fabulous island continent as soon as our mobile team can make the necessary arrangements.

When we speak publicly about how Twitter might become a profitable business, we talk about the idea of commercial usage and then explain that we're still exploring what that means—that's true. We also say traditional web banner advertising isn't interesting to us which is also true. However, to say we are philosophically opposed to any and all advertising is incorrect.

For a long time, we've said that we think there are interesting opportunities related to commercial usage. Businesses and individuals are getting value out of Twitter and we may be able to enhance that. We've just begun exploring in this area—early ideas include account authentication, management tools, and discovery mechanisms. We'll keep you posted.

The idea of taking money to run traditional banner ads on Twitter.com has always been low on our list of interesting ways to generate revenue. However, facilitating connections between businesses and individuals in meaningful and relevant ways is compelling. We're going to leave the door open for exploration in this area.

Do we hate advertising? Of course not. It's a huge industry filled with creativity and inspiration. There's also room for new innovation in advertising, marketing, and public relations and Twitter is already part of that. In fact, next month I'll be attending and speaking at the 56th annual international advertising festival, Cannes Lions 2009. I'll let you know how it goes.

Twitter evolves and thrives on how folks use it. Some of our best features are invented by users, so listening is extremely valuable. Replies and conversations are awesome and we fully intend to support and encourage their growth. We removed a setting that 3% of all accounts had ever touched but for those folks it was beloved. The use cases that folks loved about this setting will return in a new and improved form.

We screwed up from a communications perspective this week. When I heard that this change was going out, I rushed to write a blog post. This setting had both product design flaws as well as technical flaws and I did not do my homework. My post came from a product design perspective but the technical perspective was the reason it went away so quickly. Normally, I spend more time understanding the issue before explaining it on this blog but in my haste I made a mistake.

Subsequently, there is now a lot of confusion about what this change actually was. 97% of all accounts were not affected at all by this change—the default setting is that you only see replies by people you follow to people you follow. For the 3% who wanted to see replies to people they don't follow, we cannot turn this setting back on in its original form for technical reasons and we won't rebuild it exactly the same for product design reasons. I've taken some time to break down both the product design and technical problems this feature had.

Product Design Flaws

Since last year we've been hearing from users and having discussions about removing this setting—feedback indicated that it was useful but also created confusion. People would change the setting and then not understand why their timeline had fragments of conversations. From the tweet author perspective, there was an unclear expectation as to who would actually see messages which often lead to trepidation when it came to using replies. Finally, even folks who understood the setting would complain that they couldn't follow accounts with a high volume of replies because the replies overwhelmed their timeline. It was becoming apparent that we had an opportunity for improvement.

Technical Problems

Even though only 3% of all Twitter accounts ever changed this setting away from the default, it was causing a strain and impacting other parts of the system. Every time someone wrote a reply Twitter had to check and see what each of their followers' reply setting was and then manifest that tweet accordingly in their timeline—this was the most expensive work the database was doing and it was causing other features to degrade which lead to SMS delays, inconsistencies in following, fluctuations in direct message counts, and more. Ideally, we would redesign and rebuild this feature but there was no time, hence the sudden deploy.

Hopefully, this clears things up a bit and I promise to be less distracted and hasty when it comes to blog posts. We're still listening, reading tweets, gathering feedback, and working on more efficient ways of doing so. Thanks to everyone for the feedback and for using Twitter.

This morning we received lots of great info about the replies setting we changed yesterday. Folks loved this feature because it allowed them to discover new people and participate serendipitously in various conversations. The problem with the setting was that it didn't scale and even if we rebuilt it, the feature was blunt. It was confusing and caused a sense of inconsistency. We felt we could do much better.

So here's what we're planning to do. First, we're making a change such that any updates beginning with @username (that are not explicitly created by clicking on the reply icon) will be seen by everyone following that account. This will bring back some serendipity and discovery and we can do this very soon.

Second, we've started designing a new feature which will give folks far more control over what they see from the accounts they follow. This will be a per-user setting and it will take a bit longer to put together but not too long and we're already working on it. Thanks for all the great feedback and thanks for helping us discover what's important!

We're getting a ton of extremely useful feedback about yesterday's update to Settings. The engineering team reminded me that there were serious technical reasons why that setting had to go or be entirely rebuilt—it wouldn't have lasted long even if we thought it was the best thing ever. Nevertheless, it's amazing to wake up and see all the tweets about this change.

We're hearing your feedback and reading through it all. One of the strongest signals is that folks were using this setting to discover and follow new and interesting accounts—this is something we absolutely want to support. Our product, design, user experience, and technical teams have started brainstorming a way to surface a new, scalable way to address this need.

Please stay tuned and thank you again for all the feedback.

We've updated the Notices section of Settings to better reflect how folks are using Twitter regarding replies. Based on usage patterns and feedback, we've learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow—it's a good way to stay in the loop. However, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don't follow in your timeline is undesirable. Today's update removes this undesirable and confusing option.

The Importance of Discovery

Spotting new folks in tweets is an interesting way to check out new profiles and find new people to follow. Despite this update, you'll still see mentions or references linking to people you don't follow. For example, you'll continue to see, "biz. We'll be introducing better ways to discover and follow interesting accounts as we release more features in this space.

Today we launched full, two-way SMS support for Koodo Mobile. We are now live on all major operators in Canada—that means pretty much every mobile phone user in Canada has the ability to send and receive Twitter updates via SMS. Just like our deals with the rest of the major Canadian mobile operators, there are no additional fees. Twitter messages are standard rates or deducted from your bundle if you have one. More countries to follow.

We've made more progress with SMS in Canada, this time with our friends at Rogers and Fido. Starting today, if you are a Twitterer as well as a customer of Rogers or Fido, then you can update via SMS and receive updates from Twitter via SMS. Your tweets are treated as standard messages. There are no additional charges—tweets are free and will remain free.

If you haven't activated your mobile to work with Twitter, it's easy to do from your Settings page. The Twitter message limit of 140 characters was based on the limit of 160 characters imposed by SMS in general—we just needed some room to include your name in front of the message. It's this simple constraint that allows Twitter to work well in so many places.

A driving idea behind Twitter has long been to extend the power of a real-time network to mobile devices everywhere through the simple technology of SMS. We're thrilled to activate full, two-way SMS to many more people in Canada with no additional fees and we're working on the rest of the world right now.