@Mentions are tricky things, and even fairly experienced Twitter users use them incorrectly, or not in the way they intended.

When you do a “Reply” using Twitter.com or a client, you’ll get a tweet that looks like this:

@1to1Discovery Thanks for the RT

If you intended to thank me semi-privately, great. But if you intended to thank me so your entire stream could see it, that didn’t happen. That particular @Mention will only be seen by people who follow both you and me. Probably a pretty small subset of your followers.

If you wanted to thank me publicly, all you need to do is put any character before the @, like this:

.@1to1Discovery Thanks for the RT

Now everyone who follows you will see it.

Get the difference?

So here’s the scoop.

If you want a totally private conversation on Twitter, use a Direct Message.

If you want a semi-private conversation where mutual friends can chime in, use the first example above.

If you want a completely public conversation, use the second example.

Make sense?

Tags: social media

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 1st, 2010 at 8:08 am and is filed under social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.