When I was new to Twitter, I kept on seeing a “.” (period) before certain Twitter handles and I could not figure out why for the life of me. I knew that you could mention someone in a tweet by putting an “@” symbol before their Twitter handle, yet I kept on seeing people putting a period before that, and it almost seemed quite erroneous.
After some searching, I came to learn that there are in fact three, and not two, types of tweets, and those tweets vary in degree of privacy.
Public Tweets
These are tweets that everyone uses and is familiar with. A tweet is “a very short message posted on the Twitter Web site: the message may include text, keywords, mentions of specific users, links to Web sites, and links to images or videos on a Web site” (yes, the word “tweet” has become a noun in the dictionary). Tweets are sent out by the millions and some days by the billions, and they are public for the world to see. Some examples of tweets include:
Mary just had a little lamb! http://bit.ly/wjz1Na #photo
Hey @Jack, I’ll race you to the top of the hill 🙂 –Jill
My brilliant son just traded our cow for some “magical” beans. #Fail #SMH
Twitter Direct Messages
A direct message (DM) is a personal message sent via Twitter to one of your followers. DMs are different than mentions and @replies. They are in essence a 140-character email sent from one person to another where only the two people involved can read and reply. However, there are some restrictions to DMs; you cannot send a direct message to a user who is not following you, and in turn, only people that you follow can send you a direct message. This eliminates the possibility of spam DMs filling up your Twitter message box.
Private Tweets
Now we’ll dive into the meat of this post and answer why people put a “.” before twitter handles. On Twitter, people often reply to a friend or mention someone in a tweet that is meant specifically for that person. For example:
@LittleRedRidingHood ‘All the better to see you with, my dear. >> @Grandma what big eyes you have!
@Repunzel Let down your hair!
@PrinceCharming I think I may have lost my slipper at your Ball last night. Sorry I left in such a hurry, BTW. 🙁 #embarrassed
When Twitter sees that the first character in a tweet is an “@” symbol, it believes that you are talking directly to a person and considers it a “private tweet” (my phrase, not theirs). In order for someone besides myself and whomever I’m tweeting (for this case, I’ll use @JohnDoe) at to see that tweet, they must be following both myself (@wtwh_socialguru) and @JohnDoe. If they do not follow both of us, then a tweet such as “@JohnDoe hey, I think that this might help >> http://bit.ly/wm5mNz” will not show up in their news feed.
So what do you do if you want do tweet at someone directly but you want everyone to see?
Enter the “.”
Because Twitter only looks at the first character of a tweet, you can turn a private tweet into a public tweet by simply adding any character in front of the “@” symbol. Most commonly, that is done by either adding words/text, or if you’re already pushing 140 characters, you can simply put any punctuation at the beginning. People most often choose a “.” probably because it is small, unintrusive, and most eyes will pass right over it.
Some examples of proper/common usage might be:
.@SnowWhite didn’t your mother teach you not to take food from strangers? #LifeLesson
.@Goldilocks Next time, if the door isn’t locked, it doesn’t mean you can just walk right in! And that goes for everyone. #KeepOut
.@WillyWonka Look at what I just got!!! >> http://bit.ly/yFy5aD #LuckyDay #SeeYouSoon
And now you know. And knowledge is power!
–Lance Brown
Our team did a little test on Twitter for private tweets just now, and it didn’t matter whether we were following both parties or not… everything message that started with “@” someone showed up in our timeline — even when we do not follow the person mentioned. Are we reading this wrong?
That is strange, because I just double checked on my computer and I
didn’t see them. Perhaps we’re doing it differently. Are you searching
for the tweet or looking on their profile? Because it will show up that
way, but on the news feed (my twitter home feed) it doesn’t show up…
If you’d like to troubleshoot it together, I’d be more than happy to do
so 🙂
Yes, I don’t think this article is as clear as it could be. While the tweet will show up in your public timeline, it won’t show up in MY timeline if I follow you – UNLESS I also follow the person you’re talking to. Make sense? I can go to your timeline to see the tweet, but it won’t show up in the flow of tweets that I look at when I’m scanning Twitter.
Whoops… Make that “every” not “everything” 🙂
Handy tip lance, thanks for the heads-up!
Luke W
Community Manager
http://www.onedesk.com
Thanks for the info Lance! : )
Nancy K
Marketing Specialist
Who is everyone? All of your followers or all of your followers followers? I’m trying to get the messge out to my followers followers.
The only thing I didn’t like about this post was that you called it Private Tweets. How can you say Twitter considers it a private tweet when you put the @ symbol in front of a tweet and twitter thinks you are only talking to them. Sure, you are only talking to them, but the tweet isn’t private. Even though it might not be in my stream, I can still see the tweet. That’s not private. If someone was talking bad about me and said.. @BobWhy That Jeff Belonger character is an ass…. and was just sending that tweet to you, but I still saw it because I was following that person’s stream, had them in a list… that tweet is not private. Private would be considered the DM’s, the direct messages. Maybe saying, “One on One”… but not private.