Direct Messages, Replies, Tweets and retweets, they all look the same to someone who’s new to Twitter, and even those that have an active twitter account, find these features doing things they didn’t expect.

Also, each new Twitter desktop program or mobile app that handles twitter accounts and updates clearly organizes and shows these twitter categories in many different ways.

So here you have, a list with extended definitions of DMs, Replies, Tweets and Retweets for beginner’s and intermediate users,

Tweet’s gone?. Why some Tweets seem to delete themselves.

First reason, and probably the least known is the following: If you sent a tweet using it as a direct message (starting it with @username and then the phrase) and the person that received the DM erases it, then it will dissapear from your tweet timeline or DM box as well.

The same thing happens when a user gets suspended or deletes the account, all direct messages sent to you will be gone.

Second reason, when starting a tweet with d @username or DM @username, and if that user is following you, you will automatically turn that tweet into a direct message, so it won’t show up in your public tweets timeline

Not Able to Remove a Tweet sent to your User.

One thing is deleting private messages, as written above, a whole different one is trying to delete someone else’s regular tweet. The fact that a person uses @username in a tweet in some part of the tweet does not equal to a DM (they’d have to start with d or DM to do that).

a regular Tweet works pretty much like a blog post, and you can’t just visit any website and delete their content right?

You can opt by applying filters to some messages coming from certain users, Tweetdeck has an option called Global Filter that just do that.

Why Your HashTag and @User is Not Clickable.

The basic rules to make sure your hashtag and @user are always clickable in your tweet are as follows: Make sure # and @ do not have a space between them and the username or keyword. Make sure there is a space before @ or #. A space should also be made after the hashtag or username, otherwise it will create a link that could point to the wrong place.

Tweets that begin with @USERNAME will indeed be seen by just some people

Technically known as messages, we’ll give you an example to make it easier to understand: Let’s suppose you are @user1 and @user2 sends you this message:

@user1 got the tickets for the concert?

Now, in order for @user2′s followers to see that message in their main tweet stream, they should also be following you. However, by visiting @user2 profile directly, EVERYONE can see that message, regardless they are following or not.

Here is a second example:

@tweet_how is the best website for twitter tips

Remember, your followers won’t directly see this message if they are not following @tweet_how already, so you might want to rewrite the message so it turn out to be a regular tweet and ALL your followers can see it

Go to @tweet_how for the best twitter tips

.@tweet_how amazing account to get twitter tips

Some Retweets Just Don’t Show Up, Why’s That?

When a user retweets using the default twitter retweet button, it won’t be displayed for some followers in these scenarios:

1. You won’t see these retweets displayed if you usually have someone through a twitter list. Default twitter retweets don’t work with these.
2. These retweets only show up ONCE in your own twitter stream, and that’s somehow good, since you probably won’t like it a bit if you’re following thousands of other people that somehow retweeted the same stuff using the button, your dash would be cluttered with endless repeated messages.

Retweets Can Be Edited, This is How

You sure know that if you retweet using the retweet button, you won’t be able to edit it, but this is when using the platform alone, you can still modify it if you do it the following way:

1. There are several plugins for chrome or firefox that let you edit your retweets
2. Do a MANUAL RETWEET
3. Use a desktop twitter program like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite and edit retweets from there.

Tweets in your Stream from Users you Don’t Follow

It’s as simple as this: Usually tweets from people dont follow in your timeline are just retweets done by people you do follow (only those made using the retweet button.). You will always see the tiny retweet icon in grey right under the tweet (formely placed to the right of the user name.)

Too Many # in your Tweet is not a good thing to do.

You would think that by placing multiple hastags in a single tweet you could have higher chances of being found by someone searching twitter.

However, when you place multiple hashtags you are making your tweet quite difficult to read, and might be considered as spam or a bot account by many readers.

A Message was posted a Regular Public Tweet.

Always use d or dm when starting a direct message through a normal tweet

Can’t Reply to Some Direct Messages

You will only be able to send someone a direct message if that person is following you. What usually happens is that only one side is following the other, and when you receive a DM and can’t reply to it, that basically means they are not following you back, just send them something like this in hopes they see it:

“Please, @username you first need to follow me back so I can DM you”