Background

For reasons known only to Twitter's marketing plan or technical nerds, their handling off @replyNames is in transition from something everyone understood pretty well, to a new and convoluted process that has confused and annoyed just about everyone.

If you really need to real the whole the ugly and weird backstory, start here: http://bit.ly/3cVkA.

But as all of this will probably change again soon, for now, all you really need to know is this. 

Twitter has changed how @replies are handled. By default, when you click any "reply" button (on Twitter web page, Tweetdeck, and probably all other client apps), your tweet will only be seen by the person you reply to, and only those of your followers who also follow that person. This upsets many of us, who want--or need--to discover new people by watching who our friends and followeds engage. 

For example, if @whitehouse replies to @northkorea with a message like "We're invading your bizarre little country at dawn," the only people who will see that reply are @northkorea and anyone following that name.  Thus, even though your followed @whitehouse, you missed the message because you might not have even known that the name @northkorea existed (so how could you possibly be following it?). 

Do you see the complete silliness at play here? It's completely contrary to the spirit and point of many kinds of social networking, and Twitter must fix it, or their entire future is probably in doubt.  But until they do, here is the...

Workaround

If you want all of your followers to see your reply to someone, even if they don't follow that someone, then do this:

• WITHOUT USING ANY REPLY BUTTON: Simply type the @replyName at the beginning of your tweet.

  There are two downsides to this:

  • You did not easily copy the name into the input field using a single click (very annoying)

  • The conversation is not a true "reply thread," so people who view your tweet cannot trace back to the tweet you were replying to.  Since many people do that to read the context of a tweet, this is major PITA (ask your grandma what that means).

     

• USING ANY REPLY BUTTON:  Jjust add a period or exclamation points in front of the @reply name.

  Example:  !@shoqsmom Because I placed an exclamation point before your @name, all of my followers can see this tweet, even if they don't follow you

  • CAUTION:  While this makes it easy to reply, and forces tweet to all your followers, the tweet is NOT threaded (as discussed above).

Protest This Bizzare Policy Change at Twitter

By tweeting your displeasure with something like this (feel free to copy).

@TWITTER:  PLEASE RESTORE TRANSPARENT REPLIES POLICY   @ev @biz #fixReplies