When You Reply on Twitter Can Everyone See Your Reply?
At the heart of Twitter lies the ability to publicly reply to posts, referred to as tweets, so that the information can be shared and passed along to additional followers. Using the public reply properly allows you to connect with additional followers, draw new people into relevant dialogues and build communities that mirror your personality and passions. Twitter does provide the means for private responses, but this function is used sparingly on this social media platform.
Other People Are Reading
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Public Replies
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When using a public reply, everyone on Twitter can read your response to a tweet. The public reply will contain the "@username," or Twitter handle, of the person you are replying to. When you press the "Reply" button in Twitter or on a third-party Twitter application, the Twitter handle is automatically applied to the answer. You may wish to add another person in the conversation if you would like to bring the tweet to their attention, and adding their Twitter handle as well will send the tweet into their "@mention" stream, which notifies a person that someone has mentioned them in a public reply.
Using Public Replies Effectively
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Public replies lie at the heart of using Twitter as a conversational tool to build a community rather than just a broadcasting tool for marketing purposes. Adding someone's Twitter handle to your tweet will pull them into your conversation and create a multiple-person dialogue. Bear in mind that Twitter conversations are fluid and happen rapidly, so taking too long to reply to a message makes the tweet irrelevant and may be interpreted the wrong way. Include someone's Twitter handle in a tweet if you wish them to respond to a question, would like them to participate in a conversation, believe they may benefit from the information in your tweet or simply wish to "cc" them on a correspondence in the same manner as copying a person on an email.
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Reply By Direct Message
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Replying by direct message, referred to as DM, allows you to answer a question or tweet in a private manner and the message is only viewable by you and the other person. Direct messages function as an additional inbox and allow a private thought or reply to remain private. In order to send a direct message to another user, you must be following each other. If the person is not following you and you send them a DM, the message will not go through.
Direct Message Uses and Etiquette
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Direct messages are used less frequently on Twitter than one might use them on other social media platforms, such as Facebook or Myspace. Twitter is powered by fluid conversations and the DM tends to stop the fluidity of the conversation and eliminates others from participating in the dialogue. But certain messages do need to remain private and the direct message helps maintain this privacy. People may not check their direct messages regularly, so keep this in mind when sending timely information. People are extremely sensitive to spam and sending a marketing message by DM may cause someone to "unfollow" you, thus severing the connection. Use the DM function sparingly.
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