Comments on: Concise Guide to Understanding Replies, Mentions and Direct Messages on Twitter – Part 1 of 2

By: Barry

Barry — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 19:13:33 +0000

Thanks Robert for the info. Hopefully, this will help other beginners. I admittedly was expecting something similar to Facebook’s Wall.
Thanks for the other materials on best practice when RTing.

By: Robert Dwyer

Robert Dwyer — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 13:31:33 +0000

@SteveS1 thanks for the suggestion- Darren added the link from Part 1 to Part 2 a while back.

@barryb64 when a tweet includes someone’s user name they will see it appear on their http://twitter.com/#replies page. Or, if they’re using a client like TweetDeck it’ll appear in their Mentions column. However, other people won’t see it if they look at someone else’s Twitter page.

For example if you mention @ProBlogger, Darren would see it in his replies/mentions but if I go to http://twitter.com/problogger I wouldn’t see it. I would only see tweets that originated from @ProBlogger. It’s unlike a Facebook wall in this respect. The only way someone would see your mention @ProBlogger is if:
a) They follow you -and- ProBlogger
b) They go to your Twitter page
c) They did a Twitter search for the occurrence of “ProBlogger”

Hope this helps,
Robert

By: Barry

Barry — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:17:11 +0000

I have been looking all over the place for this. I am new to Twitte and was having some problems with the reply system. I have sent messages to some people I started following and it didn’t show up on their page.

I’d type @name and then the messages. I’d go over to their page and don’t see the tweet I sent. Problogger is one such person. What am I missing?

By: Steve Schildwachter

Steve Schildwachter — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:52:30 +0000

Robert: This was a very useful article and I linked to it on my blog (see address above). My only suggestion is that you ask TwiTip to provide a link to part 2 on this page and vice versa. — Steve Schildwachter

By: Giorgio Sironi

Giorgio Sironi — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 12:24:54 +0000

The “reply system” is what bugs me the most about twitter, since it is not a reply system at all. Whenever you use a @someone tag you are mentioning someone and this does not constitute a real reply because:
- there is no context preserved. Suggesting to incorporate some context in the tweet (wasting part of the 140 characters) is mandatory since there is no way for the recipient to know what you are responding to.
- conversations lose value quickly, and became useless after few hours since they are impossible to organize. What you see is only a list of reversed order tweets from two persons that you must search in their personal timeline and order according to their timestamp.
Whenever I reply to someone status on facebook or to an e-mail, I expect further replies to be accessible from the starting point (the status), being kept under it or similar. A permalink for a reply tweet is kind of useless since you read that and you say “What this guy is talking about? Maybe I should lazy load the timeline of the one he is responding to up to 2008 and see if I can find the original tweet and guess which one is in the list”.

By: Robert Dwyer

Robert Dwyer — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:59:58 +0000

Thanks for giving this a read and for the tweets everyone. I appreciate it.

@jasondrohn That’s a great analogy.
@twthosting @SoftwareCritics Thanks for the kind words!
@Calaelen @TwtrCoach You’re absolutely right- more on that tomorrow.

By: Are Morch

Are Morch — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:32:02 +0000

Hi…

You are right Calaelen, but you also have to read the title of this article.

My understanding is that this is a series that will show some of the proper ways communicating with Twitter.

You have to think outside the box, it is not all about exposure.

More then likely we will see some of your points in the next article.

Cheers.. Are

By: Mathdelane

Mathdelane — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:26:45 +0000

These are priceless gems that needs thorough understanding to effectively use Twitter to your advantage. Thanks for sharing!

By: Calaelen

Calaelen — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:26:18 +0000

If you like to answer someones tweet and you think this could be interesting for all your followers, just start with a short word like “Hey @NAME,” “Yes @NAME, I think…”

In this case you will generate a Tweet which shows up at the mention-stream of @NAME and at all your followers, not only the ones who follow @NAME

By: twthosting

twthosting — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:23:00 +0000

useful information, thumbs up!