Twitter for Dummies - Laura Fitton [24]
This spring Twitter changed how @replies are collected by making the @replies link into an @username link that tracks all mentions. Anytime your @username appears in a tweet, it gets collected here. Some heavy users don’t like this setup because it can get cluttered fast if you’re lucky enough to get mentioned a lot. Even though the page is now considered the Mentions page, most Twitterers still call them @replies, so we use that here.
If you hover your cursor over the tweet that you want to respond to, the Arrow icon appears, which you can then click to reply to that tweet. Clicking the Arrow icon makes the user’s Twitter handle appear in the “What are you doing?” window, and the words “What are you doing?” change to “Reply to” followed by the username of the person you’re replying to, and the Update button becomes a Reply button. Twitter then associates your reply with the original tweet in the Twitter system. The person can see what tweet prompted your reply by clicking the In Reply To link at the bottom of your tweet to him. This In Reply To link is helpful, especially when you’re responding to people who are frequent Twitter users and may have already put out more tweets since the one you’re replying to — it lets them see specifically what you’re responding to.
Here are some tips on how to make the most of your Twitter Mentions page (like the one shown in Figure 3-2), which you can open by clicking the @username link (with your own username) in the sidebar:
Send @replies anytime. You can send an @reply to someone by just typing the @ symbol and, without a space, his or her username (for example, @geechee_girl). Then type your message and click Update. (See Chapter 5 for more on replying.)
If you just do your reply manually (as opposed to clicking the Reply icon on a specific tweet that you want to reply to), your reply won’t be linked to any particular tweet. This may be exactly the case — @replies actually do initiate a conversation as much as they act as actual replies. But if you really want to reply to a specific tweet, you’re usually better off clicking the Reply icon.
Read (or don’t read) other people’s @replies. Some more conservative Twitter users prefer not to read @replies that don’t concern them. In the Notices tab on the Settings page, you can opt to
• Not display any @replies
• Display only @replies directed at other Twitter users in your network
• View all @replies from your contacts
If you don’t really care which @replies you see, try the last option: Seeing what your friends and followers are talking about with other Twitter users can help you get more value out of the service and is one of the very best ways to discover new people to add to your network by jumping into conversations.
Figure 3-2: The @mentions screen, where your ego can get a boost — or not.
Because of the recent shift to collecting mentions on the @username tab, it’s interesting to note that the preceding settings apply only to tweets that begin with an @username, not those where the @username appears anywhere else in the tweet.
Join a conversation. If you see that one friend or colleague on Twitter has responded to someone in his or her network who wants to know where to get the best pizza in Boston, and you have a recommendation, you can share it. You just have to click the Twitter handle that your friend is @replying to and throw in your two cents. By starting conversations with friends of your friends, you bring new people into your own stream.
Keep in mind that @replies are public tweets. So, unlike text that you send in an instant message program, which you may be used to, other people can always read your @replies, and they’ll be stored by search engines. If you have something private that you need to tell someone, use another feature of Twitter,