It seems that the way twitter replies work have changed since a bit since I read this post a while ago. There are now no longer options to display what sort of reply volumes show up on your home page.
I did a cursory look around the internet for how things currently work including twitter’s own help but couldn’t find much that explains what happens in many cases. So I thought I would do some tests using a second account so I would know for sure.
Here are my findings. We will do this with two people, PersonA and PersonB.
First of all, here are a couple of things taken from the Twitter help pages that are good to know:
Following is not necessary to reply to someone, and all of your replies are visible in the @username tab in your home page sidebar.
If your account is protected, we assume that you only want your followers to see your updates. @replies sent to people who aren't following you will not be seen. If you want to interact with everyone on Twitter, you should not protect your account.
You can only send a direct message to a person who follows you.
Your home page shows replies made by people you follow to people you follow.
Any tweet beginning with @username is considered a reply. We call tweets with @username elsewhere in the update mentions.
Wow - what a mish mash, I had to try a few things out myself just to clear it up a bit.
Note that replies and mentions are treated slightly differently, as you will see in the following examples.
Now, I'll show you what I ran through for my testing that should hopefully cover most scenarios I could think of..
Note that for the avid twitter user you will likely already know all these... I still learnt a couple of things though which was good to know.
Lets get started. The Yes / No shows where the message will appear:
Person A and Person B not following each other.
Person A has a private account.
| PersonA |
PersonA Profile |
PersonB Profile |
PersonB Home |
@PersonB Replies |
Comments |
| Hello World ! |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
Obviously.
|
@PersonB Hey – Just “replying” to you.
|
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
Your replies and mentions will not make it to people who don’t follow you if your account is private. You are talking into thin air :) Did you know that? In hindsight it seems I have sent a few into thin air :) Whoops. |
|
PersonA now makes their account public
|
| @PersonB Ok – how about now? |
Yes |
No |
No |
Yes |
If your account is public, your replies and mentions will still go to people who don’t follow you, but only if they look at their reply/mentions section on twitter.com. HOWEVER, at the time of testing the Thwirl and Digsby clients seemed to still show these on the main homepage. Blu on the other hand would only show these in its Replies area. I’d probably prefer it on the homepage myself since I’m don’t to check the Replies section much (maybe you would need that separation though if you were a major celebrity or to fight against general spam for that matter).
|
| d @PersonB Sending you some direct message spam! |
No |
No |
No |
No |
Actually – this results in an error for PersonA saying you must follow PersonB before sending a DM.
|
|
PersonB now follows PersonA
|
| Hello World ! |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
After the follow the PersonA’s updates are now visible on the home page of PersonB (we all know that one). |
| @PersonB Thanks for the follow. |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Replies and mentions will show up in PersonB’s home page as well as the Replies area since they are now following PersonA. |
| @SomeoneElse Hello someone else. |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
If @SomeoneElse is a valid user but PersonB does not follow them, PersonB won’t see this post on their home page.
|
| Hey @SomeoneElse howsit going? |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
Aha – and here is the difference between a reply and a mention – PersonB will see this on their home page even though they don’t follow @SomeoneElse.
|
| @NonexistantUser Hey non existant user. |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
Whoops – PersonA probably mistyped someone’s username, if this @NonexistantUser isn’t a valid username, this message will actually appear on PersonB’s home page… Interesting find? My guess is in this case it isn’t treated as a reply but takes on the behaviour of a mention of Mr Non-Existant.
|
|
PersonB now follows PersonC
|
| @PersonC Hey man – how are you? |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
PersonB will see on their home page replies PersonA sends to people they follow. |
| @PersonC @PersonB Hey guys – you are both cool. |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
This will also appear in the PersonB reply/mention area. Note that the @PersonB part can exist anywhere in the tweet with the same effect. |
| @SomeoneElse @PersonB Hey someone else, and B. |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Even though this was a reply to someone PersonB doesn’t follow, it will still appear for them because they were mentioned (as you would expect). |
| @SomeoneElse Hey someone else and @SomeoneElseAgain |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
This is treated as as valid reply to @SomeoneElse. Hence only @SomeoneElse and @SomoneElseAgain will receive this message (either just in their replies tab or on their home page depending on if they are following PersonA). |
| @NonexistantUser @SomeoneElseAgain Hey Mr No-One. |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
OK – as before, this one has sort of flipped to mention mode because of the invalid user to begin with (even though the second user was valid), so this will be visible on PersonB’s homepage and any anyone else following PersonA for that matter. |
If you think of any other scenarios I might have missed that are interesting or if any of these are incorrect please let me know and I will update it :)
Happy Tweeting :)
Hamish