The quirk of twitter
To avoid personal chatter spreading and swamping others twitter put in a clever yet obscure feature to ensure those tweets you want to broadcast spread and one-on-one chatter dies a quick death in the twitterverse.
If you send a tweet starting with a handle i.e. an @ is the first character:
- “@rhbbse you are awesome”
It will get seen in news streams by me and anyone who follows BOTH of us, “mutual friends”
If you want the world to know though you have to avoid the @ e.g.
- “.@rhbbse is TOTALLY awesome and the everyone I follow needs to know”
- “ Hey world @rhbbse is the best thing since slice bread”
By adding a “.” in front or some other text e.g. “Hey world” the tweet will go to all your followers and not just those that we share.
This also applies when retweeting others’ tweets which is why you often see a “.” added.
References
You can read more about this quirk here:
Virtually Visual 