{"id":185,"date":"2009-04-03T21:06:25","date_gmt":"2009-04-04T02:06:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.adam-jackson.net\/?p=185"},"modified":"2009-04-03T21:06:25","modified_gmt":"2009-04-04T02:06:25","slug":"anatomy-of-a-twitter-reply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/04\/03\/anatomy-of-a-twitter-reply\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2605 Anatomy of a Twitter Reply"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:15043,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/blog.twitter.com\\\/2009\\\/03\\\/replies-are-now-mentions.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20130401092519\\\/http:\\\/\\\/blog.twitter.com\\\/2009\\\/03\\\/replies-are-now-mentions.html&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-11-06 07:59:15&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:520},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-12-25 18:49:24&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:520},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-06 11:29:49&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:520},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-14 13:55:00&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:520},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-20 08:38:37&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:520},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-24 14:17:24&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:520},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-04 12:26:52&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:520},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-09 02:39:17&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:520},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-16 15:45:58&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:520},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-02 15:14:43&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:520},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-06 19:17:05&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:520},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-13 01:56:33&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:520},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-17 17:32:55&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:520},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-20 18:11:03&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:520},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-28 00:05:42&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:520},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-03 20:51:19&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:520}],&quot;broken&quot;:true,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-03 20:51:19&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:520},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Earlier this week, Twitter changed &#8220;replies&#8221; to &#8220;mentions&#8221; and also changed the algorithm of how the conversations formerly known as replies is presented to the user. Here is a tidbit from their <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.twitter.com\/2009\/03\/replies-are-now-mentions.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">blog post<\/a> announcing the change:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why The Update?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The @Replies feature was introduced because we noticed lots of folks putting the @ symbol in front of Twitter usernames as a way of addressing one another. For example: @biz what are you drinking in your avatar? (It&#8217;s a soy latte.) So, we started linking the @username references and collecting any tweets that began with @username on one page to make them easier to track.<\/p>\n<p>However, folks started getting more inventive as they often do. Now people include @username mentions in the middle of tweets as a way to simply reference another account. For example: I&#8217;m flying @jetblue to Boston. Also, folks reference multiple accounts in a single tweet like this: I&#8217;m flying @jetblue to Boston with @ev @crystal and @goldman.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is both bad and good. If someone tweeted out a question and I wanted to reply, I would start with @username and then my tweet. This worked well and everyone did this because it was the only way to guarantee the recipient saw your post. Of course, 3rd party Twitter applications sprang up that searched Twitter.com for mentions of your name and put it in the replies section to appear like it was a reply even though Twitter didn&#8217;t officially consider that a reply and if your app was doing an API call for &#8220;replies&#8221; a mention of your username somewhere in the middle of a tweet wasn&#8217;t recognized.<\/p>\n<p>The developers workaround of searching twitter for your name worked fine but for everyone else using Twitter.com didn&#8217;t know people were talking about them. Most mainstream users went to their replies and didn&#8217;t see anything and then moved on. Occasionally, they would wise up and do a Twitter search for mentions of their name but that was tedious and simply a vanity search.<\/p>\n<p>I can understand why Twitter did this. It helps users of Twitter&#8217;s Web Interface see every mention of their name and not just tweets that started with their name. They&#8217;re also making API changes so developers have an easier time including every mention on the replies tab of their applications. Now that we&#8217;re all caught up. I wanted to bring up why this change is a bad thing.<\/p>\n<p>The style of the reply is based on a reference to a particular user and then a tweet. This is a unique style that started appearing in early 2007 before Twitter even supported replies officially. Even @username didn&#8217;t make a link back to someone else and there was no replies tab to see when someone mentioned your name. The style of the reply was a reference to the user you&#8217;re directing your reply toward &#8220;@username&#8221; and then a space and then your reply. It never evolved or changed because if you didn&#8217;t do it that way, the intended recipient wouldn&#8217;t see it on their replies tab.<\/p>\n<p>With the recent change a reply may turn into, &#8220;I completely agree with your statement and wish we could work on this together @username&#8221;. Now the intended recipient still gets the reply in their mentions tab on Twitter.com which is good but this is the fundamental problem. When I look at my Twitter stream and decide to read a tweet that is clearly not a reply, I&#8217;ll discover at the end of the tweet that it was actually a reply I was looking at and not a unique thought.<\/p>\n<p>For current users of the system, we&#8217;ll continue to use the traditional replies style but the new users might adopt a different style so it will cause confusion and generally lead to a change in style. Evolution happens all of the time so I&#8217;m sure we&#8217;ll adopt but this change is a sign of Twitter simply conforming to a community change and embracing it. I like that idea but they have to be careful about adopting features this way because the community isn&#8217;t always right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this week, Twitter changed &#8220;replies&#8221; to &#8220;mentions&#8221; and also changed the algorithm of how the conversations formerly&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-185","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ideas","7":"cs-entry","8":"cs-video-wrap"},"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-2Z","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":373,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/06\/16\/hacking-twitter-replies-and-pissing-people-off\/","url_meta":{"origin":185,"position":0},"title":"\u2605 Hacking Twitter Replies (And Pissing People Off)","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"June 16, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Earlier, I tweeted: Seriously. Everyone that keeps adding a period or brackets when you @ someone so it shows up in my timeline. It's dumb and I hate it! Some people weren't quite sure what I was talking about so let's break down how replies work. Oh I'm sorry \"mentions\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Rants&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Rants","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/rants\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":894,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2010\/06\/10\/why-i-delete-my-twitter-replies\/","url_meta":{"origin":185,"position":1},"title":"\u2605 Why I Delete My Twitter Replies","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"June 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Since coming back to Twitter full time in March, I've been trying new things but first, a little history on my Twitter \u00a0style and how it has changed. I used to reply to everyone. Then, I replied very selectively and never did more than 1 or 2 responses before ending\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Social Media&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Social Media","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/social-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6754,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2017\/04\/09\/linked-now-on-twitter-140-characters-for-your-replies\/","url_meta":{"origin":185,"position":2},"title":"Linked: &#8220;Now on Twitter: 140 characters for your replies&#8221;","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"April 9, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"via Twitter Blog: Remember how we told you we were working on ways to let you to express more with 140 characters? Since then, we\u2019ve introduced two updates, and today we\u2019re rolling out another. Now, when you reply to someone or a group, those @usernames won\u2019t count toward your Tweet\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Linked&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":455,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/08\/03\/boxcar-for-iphone-twitter-track-is-back\/","url_meta":{"origin":185,"position":3},"title":"\u2605 Boxcar for iPhone: Twitter Track is Back!","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"August 3, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"When I started using Twitter (December, 2006), there was a feature added shortly after I started called \"Track\". When it was released, I immediately added unlimited SMS to my mobile phone. Twitter explains it in this blog post from September, 2007 but Justine Ezarik really explains it the best in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;My Thoughts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"My Thoughts","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/my-thoughts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3307,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/12\/01\/path-is-what-twitter-should-have-been\/","url_meta":{"origin":185,"position":4},"title":"\u2605 Path is what Twitter should have been","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"December 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't know who made the call at Twitter HQ (aka the Twoffice) that Twitter was only about the free-flow of information where an SMS message can span the globe within seconds and that would be all the service would become. 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