Social Shirt

If you start a Twitter with a user’s name, like @imelda, the message is considered a “reply” to that user.  The reply shows up in the user’s Replies page on Twitter.  Here’s an example:

How to Reply on Twitter

In the example above, TheFuzzball is telling Imelda about a place with a great veggie burger.

Here’s an interesting side effect: this reply will only show up in your Twitter page if you follow both TheFuzzball AND Imelda.  If you follow just one or the other, this conversation won’t clutter your incoming Twitter stream.  This is Twitter’s way of keeping “personal” Twitter conversations out of the mainstream.  You probably wouldn’t find this conversation interesting unless you could hear both sides of it – for example, if I was only following TheFuzzball (not Imelda) and this Twitter came into my list, I’d have no idea what restaurant they were talking about.  But since I follow both of them, this remark is useful to me, because I can see what Imelda was talking about before TheFuzzball replied.

Otherwise, if TheFuzzball had just put @imelda anywhere else in her tweet other than the beginning, the tweet would be visible to all of TheFuzzball’s followers, not just those who follow both TheFuzzball and Imelda.

Reply to All on Twitter

In the example below, since KeviKev started his post with something other than a username (“Hey”), everyone who follows him will see his post – not just people who follow both him and amateria:

Twitter Reply to All

This is a real system function, not slang.  Since KeviKev started his post with something other than an @ sign, everyone who follows him will see it.

Back to the Twitter Slang FAQ

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