I recently made a pledge to myself to be selective about how I use the Twitter @reply function. This is to align with the goal of providing a high signal to low noise ratio. I noticed how the stream of people I follow would often contain @reply tweets that were meaningless to me. If I hadn't seen the original tweet the follower was replying to, I often didn't understand the meaning of the response.

Saying thank you with the @ reply feature seems popular. (I cropped he identifying information from these examples.)

 

 

 

So why didn't these people use the direct message function instead? I don't know what the individuals were being thanked for, or why I should care. While those being thanked probably appreciated it, the tweets above are noise for the rest of us.

With these tweets below, I learn something. I know why the person is being thanked. If I was into Latin music, I may decide to check out the YouTube videos. The second two replies are even better examples, because they provide links.

 

 

Before tweeting an @ reply think, "Would what I'm writing be relevant or interesting to more of my followers than the just the original tweeter?" If not, rewrite the tweet. Try to include the link from the original tweet. Or, consider sending your tweet as a message instead.

What do you think? Do you see too many irrelevant @reply tweets in your twitter stream? Do you wish more people would use the message function?