The Easiest Way to Direct Message Someone
Posted by joe, Sun Sep 23 10:29:00 UTC 2007
Let's say you want to send me (Twitter: josephgrossberg) a direct message, perhaps something you don't want all your friends to see, like "@josephgrossberg I hate my boss."
You could go to Twitter.com and click on the "direct message" link, choose my username, type your message and then submit the form.
However, there's an easier way to do it. Simply use your favorite client to send a message with the format: d [username] [message], e.g. "d josephgrossberg I hate my boss".
However, there are some caveats:
- The person must be following your Twitter updates. (I assume this is an anti-spam measure.)
- You cannot send a direct message to yourself. (This is because, technically, you don't "follow" yourself.)
- Many (all?) clients, such as Twitteriffic, will not give you an error message if you try to direct message someone who doesn't follow you. It will appear to have worked. You only see that error message if you're posting from Twitter.com.