You’ve sent some tweets, followed people and hopefully gained some followers of your own. Some people prefer to listen more than they tweet, which is fine – the only thing to consider is, the more you say about your interests and interact with others, the more people will know what kind of information might be useful to you, and direct relevant things your way. It’s a way of fine-tuning your Twitter feed as well as providing useful information to others.
Sometimes you might want to address a tweet to someone – it will be visible to other followers, but you want to catch a particular person’s attention with it. This might be because:
- you are replying to or responding to one of their tweets
- you are asking them a question
- because you think they might be particularly interested in the information passed on in your tweet and want to make sure it catches their eye
- you mention them in a tweet and want them to know, for example, if you retweet one of their tweets, or are talking about their work
It may also be that you don’t follow that person, or they don’t follow you, but you still want to catch their attention with one particular tweet: they will still see it if you include their @username
For example:
- Hey @cinigabellini, enjoyed your presentation! Do you know @usablelearning’s work on this subject?
- Giving a talk at your uni next week, @cinigabellini – are you around for coffee? Would be great to meet up!
- Great resources on using social media in teaching – of interest, @ZentrumLL – http://www.edudemic.com/guides/
- Reading @hrheingold’s chapter on crab dectection: some intriguing ideas! http://rheingold.com/books/net-smart/
- I recommend this too! RT @markwarnes2 – a good read on digital scholarship! http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/DigitalScholar_9781849666275/book-ba-9781849666275.xml
To call someone’s attention to a tweet with an @ mention, you use their username or ‘handle’ preceded by a @ sign. For example, to let me know you’ve mentioned me, you would include ‘@cinigabellini’ in the tweet. If you click the ‘reply’ option which appears in grey in each tweet, Twitter will automatically insert the person’s @name into your tweet (we’ll look at the other options that appear in each tweet later!)
This is another reason to keep your Twitter name as short as you can – it uses up some of the 140 characters! This is a feature that originated with the users of Twitter, which was then subsequently designed into the platform. It’s what has turned Twitter from a broadcast medium of updates into a conversation, and that’s Twitter’s real strength.
Note – as the @ sign is reserved for marking people’s handles, you can’t use it as an abbreviation for ‘at’, for example, ‘let’s meet @6pm @cafe’ – it will treat these as an @message, and it’s likely that someone, somewhere, will have chosen @6pm or @cafe as a handle!
A small but important point is where you place the @username. If you are responding to a tweet, using the ‘reply’ button, then Twitter will automatically begin your tweet response with the @username, and you can then type the rest of your message. However, if the very first thing in the tweet is someone’s @username, then only that person and those who follow both of you will be able to see it. If you want the tweet to have a wider audience, then you either need to put a full stop in front of the @ sign like this: .@ZentrumLL OR you could include the @username later on in your tweet as part of the sentence, for example: ‘reading @ZentrumLL’s blog post about Twitter – some useful tips!’
Why might you want a wider audience to see conversations between you and another user?
What’s in it for them?
- It’s polite to acknowledge them if you’re retweeting something they’ve said, or to let them know if you’re commenting on their work
- You are drawing attention to them and their work to people who don’t already follow them – they get publicity and new followers
What’s in it for you?
- You gain a reputation as a polite, helpful, knowledgeable and well-connected professional
- You may also gain new followers or make new connections
What’s in it for your followers?
- They get to know about someone’s work which they may have been unaware of, and a new person to follow
- They are offered a chance to contribute to the discussion too, and thereby gain new contacts and audiences
- If replying to someone who’s passed on useful information to you specifically, it’s helpful to copy in their reply to your tweet response, in case your followers are also interested in the information.
To see @messages directed at you, click on the tab marked Notifications with the bell icon, at the top of the screen.
They will also appear in your Twitter stream, but you may miss them there! Depending on your settings, you can also receive an email when someone @messages you. To set your account to email you when someone mentions you, click on Settings (accessed via your Profile Picture at the top) and then ‘Email Notifications’ in the left hand menu. You may wish to edit the Email Notifications anyway as the default settings may include things you don’t want or need.
Of course, there may be times when you don’t want a wide audience to see the interaction, if it’s not going to be understandable out of context, or of interest to them but just cluttering up their feed, and in these cases, you can just start the message with ‘@’.
Remember that Twitter is a very public medium, and whether you @message someone or not, your tweets will be visible to anyone who views your profile.
Direct Messages
If you really want to send a message to just one person, but don’t want it publicly visible to anyone else, Twitter allows you to send them a DM or Direct Message, but only if that person follows you. Direct Messages on Twitter operate in the same way as other direct messaging systems, such as Facebook Messenger, for instance.
If you want to practice sending a Direct Message, feel free to contact me! If I’ve accidentally omitted to follow you, let me know!
Activity for Day 4:
So – send some @messages to people you follow – ask them a question, draw their attention to something, comment on something they’ve tweeted! Reply to anyone who messages you, to be polite, if they appear genuine and professional. And remember to send me (@cinigabellini) an @message to tell me how it’s going. Remember to add the hastag #HSLU10DoT to your tweet messages.
Enjoy the conversations.
@cinigabellini