Question by Montana: How do you follow a conversation on Twitter?
I feel like I shouldn’t have to ask this.
First off, shouldn’t it be obvious?
Second, Twitter’s help pages leave much to be desired
and Lastly, I’m known as a search wiz, able to find anything on almost any search engine, yet this one brings back millions of useless results. So, here’s my real question:
I have my accout on Twitter. I personally don’t “tweet” but instead, I only follow a group of news reporters to hear what they say and to have what feels like a direct line of communication to them. What I want to know, is why I can’t view other people’s comments and replies to the statements made by those I follow. Does that make sense?
Let’s say Jane Doe tweets “Coming up today at 10am, we have the inventor of the pencil. What do you want me to ask?”
Then 5 minutes later, you see Jane Doe Tweet “@BobSmith, I don’t think that he can answer that”
My question, is why can I never read what BobSmith said? Sure, I’m not following Bob, but if he left it as a comment to the original tweet of Jane, someone I AM following, then why can’t I see it? I only see tweets of those I follow, and 70% of them seem random to me because they’re a response to something I can’t see.
I’ve spent barrels of cash on iPhone twitter apps, thinking it was the app, but each one has the same result. So I tried the web, and still can’t see people’s comments or replies.
Seriously, is this how twitter operates? It doesn’t seem like it should be, as it makes a majority of anyone’s tweets, if they respond to something, confusing to everyone else. Or am I missing a major setting or something?
Your help is appreciated!
Best answer:
Answer by Andrew
You only see replies on your timeline if you are following both users. Twitter used to allow only following one, but they disabled that feature. See this blog post:
http://blog.twitter.com/2009/05/replies-kerfuffle.html
http://blog.twitter.com/2009/05/small-settings-update.html
Also read this:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_puts_a_muzzle_on_your_friends_goodbye_peop.php
There WERE websites that seemed to be able to do conversations, however they mostly provided functionality for seeing conversations YOU were having with other people, and alot are offline now:
So to see their replies to each other, you either need to follow both OR you can save their username as a favourite search and switch between the two to read.
Sorry not being anymore help there isnt really a better method at the moment.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
