A small change to @reply behavior

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Alex Payne

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Jan 20, 2009, 7:07:40 PM1/20/09
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Currently, statuses beginning with "@username" are marked in our
system as being in reply to the username specified, as well as in
reply to that user's current status ID. For example: if I update my
status to be "@mzsanford How's that project going?", my status'
in_reply_to_status_id attribute will be the ID of Matt's most recent
update.

Starting later this week, we will no longer be automatically
populating the in_reply_to_status_id attribute of statuses. If your
application wants to specify that a status is in reply to a specific
status ID, please include the in_reply_to_status_id parameter when
POSTing to /statuses/update.

We will continue to populate the in_reply_to_user_id attribute based
on the screen_name at the the beginning of an @reply-style tweet. This
means that even if you don't specify the particular status ID you're
replying to, you can still ensure that a status will show up in
another user's /statuses/replies feed (and the "Replies" tab on the
Twitter website).

This is all a bit confusing, but it boils down to this:

1. If you're replying to a particular tweet, make sure to include that
tweet's ID in the in_reply_to_status_id parameter in addition to
ensuring that "@username" begins the body of the update.

2. If you just want to post a public tweet to another user, start
tweets with "@username" like you always have.

Hopefully, a very minor change. Let us know if you have any questions.

--
Alex Payne - API Lead, Twitter, Inc.
http://twitter.com/al3x

Rashmi Ranjan Padhy

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Jan 20, 2009, 9:11:57 PM1/20/09
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FYI

Niv

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Jan 21, 2009, 7:51:34 PM1/21/09
to Twitter Development Talk
great change!
conversations were pretty hard to follow with the automatic
reply_to_status_id.
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