Understanding Twitter @Replies Behavior

In order to reduce clutter, Twitter changed their @replies behavior such that if you are following X and X @replies to Y, you will not see that reply unless you too are following Y. Thus, you are spared from lots of personal interaction between people; one of which you are not interested in. Some rued this change in behavior because you could no longer discover random interesting people you could follow. But if you see the way some people use Twitter virtually like a chat session, you’ll be glad to be spared of all that chatter.

But here’s where things get confusing. You see RTs (re-tweets) from people you are following all the time and they don’t always RT from the people you are following too. Most of the RTs I read are tweeted originally by someone I don’t follow. So does putting RT in front of the @ symbol nullify the default behavior for replies? Similarly #FollowFriday meme is quite popular in which people basically recommend 5 or more people to follow by putting an @reply to them preceded by the #FollowFriday hash tag. So does Twitter also nullify the default behavior when such hash tags are used? Finally, would I get the @reply (to someone I don’t follow) if the person uses it in middle or end of the tweet as opposed to the beginning, like the default syntax for a reply is?

I understand Twitter’s logic in excluding @replies to people I don’t follow and trust me, it has saved me oodles of time. But at the same time, I would prefer an option to push certain @replies to all my followers even when they aren’t following that person…without RT-ing. But then, plenty of people would end up doing that rendering Twitter’s change useless.

If any of this made sense, let me know if you can clear the fog or just answer the following:

How do you use Twitter?

  • A little bit of all three (55%, 16 Votes)
  • Just read tweets (28%, 8 Votes)
  • Mostly personal observations (7%, 2 Votes)
  • Mostly link sharing (7%, 2 Votes)
  • Mostly Re-Tweets (3%, 1 Votes)

Total Voters: 29

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“Understanding Twitter @Replies Behavior” [Short URL: http://www.ipatrix.com/?p=2993] was published Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 at 4:45 pm by Patrix, filed under 9rules, DesiPundit, Internet, Observations, and tagged as , , , , . Both comments and linkbacks are closed.

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  • http://adityaramgopal.com Aditya

    The way I see it, it works this way: A tweet that starts with an @username is visible only to the followers of the person (let’s call him X) who tweeted it AND followers of “username”.

    If there is any stray character before @username in a tweet then it becomes public to anyone who follows X.

    • Patrix

      So all I have to do is to prefix with a ‘stray’ period or something to push it too all my followers? Have you tested this?

      • http://sherene.wordpress.com Sherene

        Haven’t tested it, but I’ve seen people start their @ tweets with a dot prefixing it, perhaps becuase they wanted to push the @ mentions to all their followers

        • Patrix

          I see that now. I wonder why more people aren’t abusing that making Twitter’s rule re:@ useless.

  • http://adityaramgopal.com Aditya

    However I’ve noted another anomaly to all this — if you use the web interface of twitter for your updates (I do it sometimes although I predominantly use Tweet Deck)

    Don’t know if it happens as a rule, but I’ve seen it happen. If someone I don’t follow say, X tweets something and then adds my @username at the end (or in the middle) I won’t get to see that tweet on my Twitter homepage on the web.

    However since TweetDeck and other clients have a tab that groups it under “Mentions” rather than “replies” it manages to catch those.

    • Patrix

      I rarely use the Twitter homepage. I find it hopelessly inadequate. BTW how about X tweets with @Y and @Z but you follow only Y, do you still see the tweet?

    • http://blog.twilightfairy.in Twilight Fairy

      aditya, if you arent following someone n they mention you, it will obviously not show in your homepage. Your homepage shows tweets only from ppl YOU follow. However this aforementioned reply will show under the replies tab on ur twitter page. (similarly a DM will show under DM tab n nowhere else). that’s how twitter works right from the beginning.

      Tools like tweetdeck/twhirl do not maintain a distinction between ur homepage and replies. Or even DM’s for that matter.So everything comes in one stream even though they provide separate tabs for replies and DM also.

  • http://sampada.livejournal.com Sampada

    Ok, I’m not sure I understand all of your points/questions, because I am generally a confused person. However, I do want to say something about this question of yours:

    Finally, would I get the @reply (to someone I don’t follow) if the person uses it in middle or end of the tweet as opposed to the beginning, like the default syntax for a reply is?

    I am guilty of not following everyone that follows me. I sort of wait for someone to say something to me, or show some kind of interaction, so that I can generate some interest toward them. For this, I regularly check the @sampada tab under Home in the sidebar. That gives me a list of anything anyone mentions me – at the start, middle or end of a tweet.

    I hope it makes some sense. Tweet lingo is tough!

    • Patrix

      Yup. But I see that you are talking about the web interface. Why not use something like Tweetdeck or Twitterfox so that way you get a notification each time someone mentions you.

  • http://www.suyogdeshpande.net/blog/ Supremus

    http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/14023 :)

    You are confusing replies and mentions. They both begin with @, but if @ is preceded by anything then its not a reply anymore, but a mention that goes to everyone…

    S

    • Patrix

      Ah! Now I see. You are right, I was confusing mentions and replies but they do look the same; syntax-wise on the front end.

  • http://mesoliloquy.wordpress.com Solilo

    I am fairly new to twitter. I was going to answer some of your questions but see that you already got your doubts cleared. It was useful for me too.

    “does putting RT in front of the @ symbol nullify the default behavior for replies?”

    Yes! it does. Re-tweet is aimed for maximum reach. So @ here just shows the source.

    As replied above ‘@’ in the beginning is a reply which will only be read by followers. ‘@’ anywhere after that is mere mention which indicates the source of the comment.

    The aim of this micro blogging site is to get maximum users and maximum reach so eliminating RTs of people we don’t follow won’t serve the purpose. I don’t think a user’s convenience is their precedence as of now. It might be as it evolves. :D

    • Patrix

      Thanks and yes, I understand the logic and purpose of RTs. But I wasn’t aware that putting the ‘@’ symbol in any other place would nullify the rules for @replies.

  • Prasoon

    You are confused about replies n mentions yes :)
    you will see a reply starting with @X in your timeline only if you’re following the person – plain n simple. If some friend of yours has even a stray space in front of @Y whom you don’t follow, it’s just a generic tweet which you’ll see and it’s not considered as a reply even though it might be part of a conversation. The followfriday tweets are this kind – they have stray characters before the usernames actually come in the tweet.
    You’ll see all tweets that mention you and are public on the mentions page in the web interface – this will be same result as your tweetdeck mentions column.

    Hope this clears.

    Btw, thanks for the mobile plugin for the site. Looks really nice n is hazaar times helpful when browsing on the iPhone.

    • Patrix

      Yup. Thanks. The difference between replies and mentions is finally clear to me.

      And I’m glad someone is accessing my blog via the iPhone. I installed the mobile plugin months ago but never heard from anyone.

  • http://blog.twilightfairy.in Twilight Fairy

    ok this requires a blogpost to respond to ur blogpost :p.

    Many ppl have clarified ur doubts here but let me do it again since u wanted my perspective.

    1. Twitter initially used to show only @replies which started with ur id. Sometime early this year (I think) they started showing “all” @replies wherever ur id was mentioned in a tweet. (till that time most of us were just searching for our id’s and filling the gaps). So essentially there’s NOTHING different in @reply or a mention now. Anywhere ur id comes with ‘@’ in front, it will come in ur replies tab.

    2. Again sometime this year twitter decided that we shd not see ALL replies from ppl we follow but only replies to those that we follow in common. Again, this was ALREADY present as an option in the settings n those who wanted to save time n avoid every scobleizer tweet to everybody else cd have very much used it. Twitter’s stupid imposition to take it away from even those who didnt want to was quite dictatorial which started a furore in the form of #fixreplies hashtag.

    3. After that furore, twitter promised a temp fix & ‘another way’ of discovery mechanism coz the earlier way of replies often led to discovery of interesting ppl coz of the ones u followed, tweeting to them, n u eavesdropping on their conversation. In the meantime for the lack of this, twitter declared that they will differentiate on how @reply tweets are written. If you do NOT click ‘reply’ (and invoke the API) to type @reply to someone it will show to ALL your followers irrespective of whether they follow u or not. In other words if I manually type “@patrix …” in my timeline without “clicking” on reply in @patrix’s tweet, it shd show to ALL my followers. However it doesnt work and has never worked that way in spite of their declaration on their blog.

    4. There’s nothing that twitter has allowed/disallowed in terms of a character in front of tweet overriding @replies behaviour. That is just a natural corollary of twitter rules! Any character inserted before @reply makes it an individual tweet n not a reply. Many ppl use such methods knowingly or unknowingly.

    5. Prefixing RT or hashtag or . are all user behaviours and have nothing to do with twitter. Mostly ppl do a ‘reply inline tweet’ to ‘broadcast’ to everyone. that’s abt it.

    • Patrix

      Thanks a lot. Having this discussion clarified a lot of things and I guess, experimenting with different options is the best way to find out what exactly is the rule at Twitter at this time. Strangely, I could find no such clarification in Twitter’s own guidelines. For such a popular site, you would expect extensive documentation.

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