It'd be great if .@ would still count as a reply (i.e. that tweet would still contain a pointer to the tweet it's replying to) but be visible by everyone. It's the best of both worlds. Also I wonder what happens if you hit Reply, but then delete or modify the @username. Is it still counted as a reply to that person's tweet, and therefore only visible to the intersection of your followers? EDIT: s/union/intersection
I just did some testing on Twitter for Mac:
* Having the @username anywhere in the tweet preserves the pointer.
* Deleting the username clears out the pointer.
* Deleting the username, and retyping it (at the end of the tweet) restores the pointer.
The last scenario makes me think that the validation is server side. It seems that Twitter ensures that the tweet still mentions the author of the replied-to tweet or it will clear out the pointer.
It's not really a command, just convention. If my tweet begins with @Permit, then it's only visible to the intersection of your and my followers, so somebody that follows me but not you would not see it. But if I start it with anything else (people have just adapted . as a convention, but it could be anything) then it's visible to ALL of my followers. Except, as this article explains, if I used the formal Reply butto…
Again, you mean the intersection of your and my followers.
It's not really a command, just convention. If my tweet begins with @Permit, then it's only visible to the intersection of your and my followers, so somebody that follows me but not you would not see it. But if I start it with anything else (people have just adapted . as a convention, but it could be anything) then it's visible to ALL of my followers. Except, as this article explains, if I used the formal Reply butto…
I don't use Twitter, but it sounds like you're describing the intersection, not the union.
I'm pretty sure it's been this way for quite some time now...
i remember it was a pretty big topic after twitter changed (hijacked) the RT convention. there was an outcry because twitter justified it at first with "UX streamlining", but as a matter of fact it was a scalability issue. (or maybe i'm mixing up two different controversial decisions by twitter into one...)
... but everyone got used to it and the .@ convention was adopted pretty fast.
It's not really a command, just convention. If my tweet begins with @Permit, then it's only visible to the intersection of your and my followers, so somebody that follows me but not you would not see it. But if I start it with anything else (people have just adapted . as a convention, but it could be anything) then it's visible to ALL of my followers. Except, as this article explains, if I used the formal Reply butto…
Oh I see, that makes perfect sense actually. Thanks you.
I guess there's value in explicitly calling out to your followers that you're broadcasting your reply with the ".@" but I find it horrendously ugly, even in the Twitter world where tweets like @bob RT @Mary #FF @Ryan @Greg #ThePiManCometh t.co/Nf8QZ are commonplace and obviously ugly, I find them less so than .@ —My preferred way to broadcast a reply to all is either with a leading space (if that even works anymore) or to use as much English as possible (Well, @Bingo I think we have a #Nameo problem). But that could just be me being a terrible Twitter user (you'll see on my feed that I tend to prune my own tweets down to exactly 140 characters and try to avoid abbreviations, acronyms, etc., though I retweet many other tweets). I also rarely broadcast replies because I figure that nobody cares unless they already follow both of us in the conversation, and also because I have my website configured to display recent tweets that aren't @ replies, so I have better control over what's showing on my blog sidebar (without limiting my ability to @reply).
I apologize if this is off topic, but from the other comments it seems that everyone here was aware of this .@ command (something I'd never heard of before). Is there some kind of list where all these special commands may be found?
It's not really a command, just convention. If my tweet begins with @Permit, then it's only visible to the intersection of your and my followers, so somebody that follows me but not you would not see it. But if I start it with anything else (people have just adapted . as a convention, but it could be anything) then it's visible to ALL of my followers. Except, as this article explains, if I used the formal Reply butto…
I'm confused. I'm looking around at a few accounts and I see a LOT of them starting with @whatever where I do not follow the other person. Is this a setting somewhere? Did I completely misunderstand? And they show up whether or not I am logged in, whether or not I am following the person using @whatever.
Are you sure this tweet-hiding applies when not using the Reply button?
It'd be great if .@ would still count as a reply (i.e. that tweet would still contain a pointer to the tweet it's replying to) but be visible by everyone. It's the best of both worlds. Also I wonder what happens if you hit Reply, but then delete or modify the @username. Is it still counted as a reply to that person's tweet, and therefore only visible to the intersection of your followers? EDIT: s/union/intersection
I just did some testing on Twitter for Mac: * Having the @username anywhere in the tweet preserves the pointer. * Deleting the username clears out the pointer. * Deleting the username, and retyping it (at the end of the tweet) restores the pointer. The last scenario makes me think that the validation is server side. It seems that Twitter ensures that the tweet still mentions the author of the replied-to tweet or it w…
Replies are triggered by two factors. An `in_reply_to_status_id` field that is filled in behind the scenes and an @mention of the original author in the text.
It's not really a command, just convention. If my tweet begins with @Permit, then it's only visible to the intersection of your and my followers, so somebody that follows me but not you would not see it. But if I start it with anything else (people have just adapted . as a convention, but it could be anything) then it's visible to ALL of my followers. Except, as this article explains, if I used the formal Reply butto…
I'm confused. I'm looking around at a few accounts and I see a LOT of them starting with @whatever where I do not follow the other person. Is this a setting somewhere? Did I completely misunderstand? And they show up whether or not I am logged in, whether or not I am following the person using @whatever. Are you sure this tweet-hiding applies when not using the Reply button?
If you look directly at someones profile you will see all of their tweets regardless of who they are too. The reply behavior only applies to the tweets you see in your home timeline.
I'm confused. I'm looking around at a few accounts and I see a LOT of them starting with @whatever where I do not follow the other person. Is this a setting somewhere? Did I completely misunderstand? And they show up whether or not I am logged in, whether or not I am following the person using @whatever. Are you sure this tweet-hiding applies when not using the Reply button?
If you look directly at someones profile you will see all of their tweets regardless of who they are too. The reply behavior only applies to the tweets you see in your home timeline.
Oh I see, that makes perfect sense actually. Thanks you.
I guess there's value in explicitly calling out to your followers that you're broadcasting your reply with the ".@" but I find it horrendously ugly, even in the Twitter world where tweets like @bob RT @Mary #FF @Ryan @Greg #ThePiManCometh t.co/Nf8QZ are commonplace and obviously ugly, I find them less so than .@ —My preferred way to broadcast a reply to all is either with a leading space (if that even works anymore)…
Well sometimes the leading . is useful to you're replying to something.
An arguably better convention is simply to @ the person you're replying to at the end of the tweet. If it's a tweet worth broadcasting, it may as well read like an ordinary tweet.