Twitter Syntax

There used to be an Official Twitter Commands page and a Twitter Lingo page. This information is now mostly of historic interest.

These commands could be sent to the appropriate number (below) to interact with Twitter on a mobile phone.

Following changes at Twitter this page may need to be updated.

Numbers

Twitter Canada: cell 21212

Twitter USA: cell 40404

Twitter International[1]: cell +44 7624 800 379

Obsolete Numbers

Twitter UK: cell +44 7624 801423

The ability to receive SMS updates in the UK was removed in 2008.

Commands

Messages

• @username + message: directs a twitter at another person, and causes your twitter to save in their "replies" tab. Aka "at replies" or "@replies". Note that since @-reply handling change in (May?) 2009 (citation to Twitter blog post needed), messages starting with @username passed along only to your followers who also follow @username.
  • .@username + message: similar but the "." prefix is used to force/trick Twitter to have the message show up in the person's "replies" tab as well as be sent to all of your followers. Work around for the @-reply change mentioned above.
• d username + message: sends a person a private message that goes to their device, and saves in their web archive.
  • dm username + message also works. Side effect, you can't start a tweet with "d " or "dm "[2]

Friends and Followers

• invite phone number: 415-555-1212 john sends a text invite to john
• accept: this command will accept a friend invitation. Example: Accept Jade. NOTE: when you accept, you must type in the name exactly as it was sent to you in order for Twitter to recognize it properly.
• deny: this command will deny a friend invitation.
• delete: for now, deleting friends must be done from the web.
• fav username: marks a person's last twitter as a favorite

• get username: gets this person's last update
• on or start or wake: enables twitter phone updates
  • on username: turns on notifications for a specific person on your device. For example, ON alissa.
• off or stop or sleep: disables twitter phone updates
  • off username:turns off notifications for a specific person on your device. For example, OFF blaine.
• follow all: turns on phone updates (entire friends list)
  • follow username: you will get phone updates from this person (requires initial approval)
    • shortcut: F
• leave all: turns off phone updates (entire friends list)
  • leave username: disables phone updates from this person
    • shortcut: L
• nudge username: encourages this person to update
• whois username: text WHOIS BIZ to 40404 you will get the info Biz has filled out in his settings

Finding Out Stuff

• followers: find out who is following your updates (no longer supported)
• stats: find out how many people are following you, and how many friends you have
• help: sends back a list of twitter lingo commands

To update your own Twitter timeline, just text whatever is on your mind to the Twitter number: 40404, or use +447781488126 if you are outside the US.

Tracking

• track word: get notifications via SMS or IM when a word is mentioned. type again to turn off.
• untrack word: stops tracking a word
• untrack all: stops tracking all words
• track off: stops tracking all words
• tracks: returns a list of words you're tracking

hash tags

Hashtags (aka "#tags") allow tagging of Twitter posts. For example, post "I love #microformats a lot" to Twitter and the post is tagged "microformats".

group accounts

Groups of multiple people may share a single Twitter account to represent their organization.

• Attribution: Ending a message with ^XX, indicates the author of a message on a group account. The XX initials correspond to one of the staff representing the group. (This convention popularized by CoTweet, adopted by microformateers. e.g. [3], [4])

See also

• picoformats
• twitter nanoformats
• A suggested method of publishing microformats in Twitter posts