Removing the ".@" syntax is a mistake. I don't always want to broadcast replies. I still don't understand why URLs are still included within the 140 char limit either. Can someone explain that better than the article?
Urls where fixed to 22, then 23, lately 24 chars. It's the length of the actual shortened url.
I've been working with people helping social media for a bit, and one common issue in preparing a list of tweets to schedule is making sure the length is ok. So you end up with silly xls files where you have a url column, a text column, etc. and weird formulas to compute the size.
I think Twitter just wants to simplify the life. You can send 140 chars of text/comment. Mentions, urls, images, etc. are not counted because normal people aren't counting like that.
He was asking why URLs ARE still being counted as part of the length – Twitter seems to have excluded everything except for those. Your reply demonstrates how arbitrary that distinction is :)
What they mean is that .@ isn't getting removed -- by default your replies won't be broadcast to everyone (same rules apply as always) -- but since you no longer see the leading @mentions, you physically cannot do .@ on the tweet. The right way to do it going forward will be a retweet on your own tweet.
I've been working with people helping social media for a bit, and one common issue in preparing a list of tweets to schedule is making sure the length is ok. So you end up with silly xls files where you have a url column, a text column, etc. and weird formulas to compute the size.
I think Twitter just wants to simplify the life. You can send 140 chars of text/comment. Mentions, urls, images, etc. are not counted because normal people aren't counting like that.