Twitter Loves @You. No, Literally. And Unintentionally.

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

MG Siegler is a general partner at CrunchFund and a columnist for TechCrunch, where he has been writing since 2009. His focus is on Apple. Prior to TechCrunch, MG covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He’s previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in... → Learn More

Twitter’s new hovercards are pretty useful. While they’ve been slowing rolling out for several weeks, everyone should see them now. They’re the overlays that come up when you hover over a Twitter username on Twitter.com. They’ve also exposed a rather interesting bug.

With Twitter’s Retweet functionality, when someone retweets a tweet, below that tweet is placed some text noting who retweeted that item (sorry, I know I just used “tweet” or “retweet” a dozen times there). That person’s name is a hyperlink to their Twitter account, so the hovercard function works for that name as well. But if you happen to be the person that retweeted the tweet, it says that “you” retweeted the item. And that “you” is still hyperlinked. But rather than “you” linking to your Twitter account, it actually links to @you.

And this guy does not like you.

@You, whose name is Wallace, hasn’t tweeted in almost a year. But his last tweet reads: “I kill people who nudge me

Despite the no tweeting in a year, and only 62 tweets total, this guy has over 5,600 followers — likely thanks to this Twitter bug.

So no, @You isn’t retweeting everything in the Twittersphere. It’s just a bug that Twitter has somehow overlooked.

[thanks Owaeis]

Company: Twitter
Website: twitter.com
Funding: $1.16B

Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 (launched publicly in July 2006), is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post their latest updates. An update is limited by 140 characters and can be posted through three methods: web form, text message, or instant message. The company has been busy adding features to the product like Gmail import and search. They recently launched a new site section called “Explore” for...

Learn more

Tags:

Sponsored Ads

blog comments powered by Disqus

Sponsored Ads

Sponsored Ads