This is not Twitter..Use of the @ "at sign" when addressing people .

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orka

Registered User
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Maybe I'm getting grumpy in my (too old for twitter)-age, but I find it really irritating the number of posters who have started putting @ in front of other posters names when replying. If you start a sentence with 'orka, I don't agree with you', I'll understand it's for me - no need for '@orka...' What does the @ add to anything outside of twitter?
 
@orka ;)

This was around long before Twitter
It's used by posters who don't quote the poster they are addressing

It's not some Twitter convention, was around a long time before that
 
Twitter is a bit of a 'clever-boys' club, that uses its own codes and conventions, that are quite meaningless to the real world.
 
When is this madness of tweeting or should I say twit -ering going to stop. Last night I saw Vinnie the fox (Brown) anxiously asking some young chap with a laptop what was the latest he had about the show .

People who twitter or twit :confused: will get so far ahead of themselves that they will leave themselves behind :D
 
The use of the @-sign when addressing some one certainly predates twitter.

I remember asking a poster here a few years ago (2007) about its usage but I can remember any reply.
Use of the @ "at sign" when addressing people on message boards

The @-sign doesnt count for a google search so its historical usage is difficulte to track.

from wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sign

On some online forums without proper threaded discussions, @ is used to denote a reply; for instance: "@Jane" to respond to a comment Jane made earlier. Similarly, in some cases, @ is used for "attention" in e-mails originally sent to someone else. For example, if an e-mail was sent from Catherine to Steve, but in the body of the e-mail, Catherine wants to make Keirsten aware of something, Catherine will start the line "@Keirsten" to indicate to Keirsten that the following sentence concerns her. This also helps with mobile e-mail users who cannot see bold or color in e-mail.
In microblogging (such as Twitter and StatusNet-based microblogs), @ before the user name is used to send publicly readable replies (e.g. "@otheruser: Message text here"). The blog and client software can automatically interpret these as links to the user in question. This use of the @ symbol was also made available to Facebook users on September 15, 2009.[6] In Internet Relay Chat (IRC), it is often shown before a user's nick to mark the operator of a channel.
On some online forums without proper threaded discussions, @ is used to denote a reply; for instance: "@Jane" to respond to a comment Jane made earlier. Similarly, in some cases, @ is used for "attention" in e-mails originally sent to someone else. For example, if an e-mail was sent from Catherine to Steve, but in the body of the e-mail, Catherine wants to make Keirsten aware of something, Catherine will start the line "@Keirsten" to indicate to Keirsten that the following sentence concerns her. This also helps with mobile e-mail users who cannot see bold or color in e-mail.
In microblogging (such as Twitter and StatusNet-based microblogs), @ before the user name is used to send publicly readable replies (e.g. "@otheruser: Message text here"). The blog and client software can automatically interpret these as links to the user in question. This use of the @ symbol was also made available to Facebook users on September 15, 2009.[6] In Internet Relay Chat (IRC), it is often shown before a user's nick to mark the operator of a channel.
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aj
 
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