Twitter has fiddled a bit with how it handles those @ replies in a change it says “better reflects how folks are using Twitter now.” Whereas before the @ reply was used at the beginning in a direct reply to the twittee(?), now users are employing the feature in different ways.

For example, instead of a reply, a tweet may include the tweetname of that user as a reference, such as “I’m sitting here blogging with @harrymccracken on @technologizer” which isn’t a direct reply, but more a mention per se, thus the new term (we are shameless about promoting our twitter accounts here aren’t we? Sorry couldn’t resist throwing myself in there.).

Thus, the new Mentions tab, which replaces the Replies tab and is now listed as your twitter account name, will show these indirect tweets as well.

I kind of like this new feature. However, I’d much rather like it if they’d seperate these indirect ones from my direct ones. Especially if your a popular twitterer, you could have hundreds of users mentioning you every day. Your legitimate direct tweets would get lost in the mess.

Still, I think its good Twitter is going to let us know when we’re getting talked about. I can see the positives in that, too.

 
5 Comments


Read more: Twitter