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I was talking more about announcements.

I do the @reply thing, but it's a little sucky, since that @reply shows up in everyone's feed.

So long as you start the tweet with @[twitteruser], your @reply will only appear in someone's feed if they follow you and also the person you are sending the at-reply to. Or if they are the person you're sending the message to, of course.

that's the point, if my message is only to that one person, why would my followers want to read about it?

To clarify, your @reply won't necessarily appear in everyone's feed. It will only appear if:

1) They are the user you are sending the @reply to, OR 2) They follow you AND the person you send the @reply to.

So for example, if I follow @balsamiq and @fogbugz and @balsamiq sends an @reply to @fogbugz, that message will appear in my feed. But if @balsamiq sends an @reply to a user I do not follow, I will not see it in my feed.

I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way. I think everyone see's your @reply -- perhaps you mean DMs?

jsb is correct; they made this change a few months back.

Extra tidbit: this is the reason for those ". @foo ..." tweets you may be seeing. If any character precedes the @, then the tweet will appear in all your follower's feeds; otherwise, it behave as jsb described.

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