When to use Twitter instead of e-mail

Unlike some people, I maintain a good relationship with e-mail. I keep my inbox empty (see Empty your inbox), and junk mail no longer wastes my time, thanks to the combination of Gmail's spam filtering and C-Command's $30 SpamSieve 2.7. Because I'm almost always too busy for microblogging and random chatting, I use Twitter only occasionally and instant messaging even less. Nevertheless, I've discovered that in certain situations, Twitter is a better way to communicate than e-mail.

1. When avoiding junk-mail filters is a priority

Twitter doesn't include--or need--anything like the spam filtering that's de rigueur for e-mail, because it's inherently an opt-in system. You follow only those people you want to read about, and you can "unfollow" people at any time if you don't want to read any more of their tweets. You can also block people who follow you if you don't want them to receive your tweets (although they can still view your public page on the Twitter Web site). This makes it quite easy to avoid junk tweets, however you define them. As a result, if you want to be positive that someone gets a message from you and that it won't be inadvertently swallowed by his or her spam filter (as has happened to me several times recently, when sending completely innocuous e-mail messages to colleagues), a direct-message tweet may be just the ticket.

To send a direct message, start a tweet with a D followed by a space and the username (as in D joekissell). This is different from simply replying to a tweet by putting another person's Twitter username, preceded immediately by an @ sign (as in @joekissell) at the beginning of a tweet. When you reply normally, everyone who follows both you and the other person will see what you wrote--and so will the person whose username you typed, whether they follow you or not. In addition, your tweet will show up in your public feed. By contrast, when you send a direct message to another user, only that person will see it (and not anyone who follows either of you). The trick is, you can send a direct message only to someone who follows you, so for two-way direct messages, you and the other person must be following each other. So, for example, if you follow me and try to send me a direct message but I don't also follow you, the message won't go through.

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