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To indicate they're talking about a Twitter user, without saying "The Twitter user, HipsterIE6", you humourless ninny.

I've seen people using it here, when referencing a sibling post in a thread. I think some people have generalized it to mean "I'm talking about someone who I know will read this."

http://vanillaforums.org use the format as a functional component. @Username in a post will (per target user settings) send them an email with a link to the post. Great way to drag specific people in to a thread.

I think it has genericized beyond Twitter to mean "somebody with a username of HipsterIE6". I've seen it on pretty much every site I visit to mean users on that site. Of course, then figuring out context becomes non-trivial: is this Twitter's HipsterIE6 or HN's HipsterIE6?

I miss using ~ to indicate usernames.

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