What Does the .@, i.e. the Period Before a Username in a Twitter Reply Mean?

Period Before @ on Twitter

I finally decided to check in on why people type a period before the username (".@") in some Twitter replies, for example:

.@launchforum - Tell v-Gor I said "Hi"!​

I found a detailed overview on it here. The short version:

Twitter does not always show every tweet you make to all of your followers if they start with @username (replace username with whomever your're tweeting with of course).

So if you want everyone to see the reply you are making, adding the period "." just before the "@" symbol will trick Twitter into displaying your tweet to everyone that is following you.

Well... it will show up in their stream depending on which Twitter software they use, and how closely they're actually watching. =)

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hmm very interesting Joe, I've never noticed the dot before :|

 

Same here. Very interesting. I'll have to try it out one day

 

It's not always there--just when the person types it in their message. If you follow @voiceradio, you'll notice that I do it occasionally (i.e. ".@thegreatestbandever's new single is the greatest new single ever: [link]"). If I don't put the dot there, the only people that will see it in their news feeds are those following both @voiceradio and @thegreatestbandever.

 

cray, I consider myself to be very active on twitter and I've never noticed someone posting a dot before the @reply

 

I did it with @voiceradio on Friday, lol: https://twitter.com/#!/voiceradio/status/135096675831259136
And through my own account earlier last week: https://twitter.com/#!/trombone13/status/133955398163103745

 

I've never really noticed this, but now you've mentioned it, I have had experiences where I haven't seen peoples Tweets on my homepage!