How to get around the twitter @reply change

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Twitter recently made a change where you will not see any tweets from folks you follow if they start with a @username that you are also not following.

This means that if you start a tweet with @username, only your followers that are also following @username will see it the tweet.

Personally, I like the feature. But some folks don’t. So here’s how you can easily get around it:

When replying to someone, don’t start your tweet with @username.

What I typically have always done when replying to other tweets is:
1. retweet, which copies their tweet.
2. edit out all the extraneous stuff but leave the beef of their tweet.
3. add my reply to the start of their tweet.

So for example.

I’m following @davekozuki.
He sent out this tweet: Building stats module for @teamcoupon

I replied with this: How’s your deal coming along? @davekozuki: Building stats module for @teamcoupon

Therefore all my followers saw it.

Try it!

4 replies
  1. Kennedy808 says:

    Hey Peter, I didn’t even realize that Twitter had made a change to @replies recently because I always had my account set to only show @replies to people that I also follow. I did that because I read every tweet from people I follow, and it was too much to keep up with if I also had to see their every reply to some stranger when I didn’t even see the other half of the conversation.

    I don’t understand why Twitter made this the default and only setting (maybe to reduce total tweet volume?), but still I don’t totally agree with your workaround. At least according to Twitter, most users had their accounts set to not show non-follower @replies, and so the habit of retweeting and then replying in the same tweet is going to add unwanted clutter to already full timelines.

    I hope the vocal supposed-minority makes their voice heard and Twitter reinstates the choice of which replies you’d like to see, but when they do, I think people should accept that choice by their followers and not force content on them that they specifically said they don’t want to see.

  3. Karina Wright says:

    But then that just screws it up for the people who don’t want all the @replies. They are forced to see it because it will appear in your public stream. What was the big fat hairy deal in them just leaving our setting alone and, god forbid, explaining it better.

    If this doesn’t get rescinded, I’m going to leave twitter. I don’t want to deal with people who feel that they have the right to pick how I choose my friends.

  4. Heinz says:

    Your workaround will make my @replies show up in all my follower’s timelines, even if they prefer not to see it (using the default setting before the change). I’m not sure you’d want to do that.

    Also, this workaround it doesn’t fix the biggest problem most people have with this change. It will still not allow me to see all @replies, unless everybody starts using your trick to circumvent the current restriction.

    As I see it, the only solution here is for Twitter to reverse its decision to take away user choice and force this setting upon us all.

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