What Is a Direct Message or DM on Twitter?

Sometimes you want to send a fellow Twitter user (Twitterer?) a private message that does not get seen by the rest of the world or even your followers. It’s just between you and that other person. Similar to the private Forum Message Center for the Cafe Career Forum members. [NOTE: WORK IN PROGRESS - Forum still being built.]

To send this person a Direct Message (DM), click on Direct Messages (toward the top, all the way to the right below your Twitter Profile and @AccountName). You still have only 140 characters, just as with a regular tweet – but there’s nothing to stop you from getting a conversation going. Just select the person you want it to go to (from your list of available names), type in your message, and send…I mean tweet it. If you want to send…I mean tweet more than one DM to finish your thought, you can simply add > at the end of the first tweet to let the person know more is coming. Or you could just say (more...) but the > sign saves you characters.

If the person’s name does NOT show up in your list of available names, you might still be able to DM them by going to their profile and seeing if the word “message” (with a link) appears next to their Twitter name under Actions as you scroll down the right hand column. If it’s there, you can DM them.

One more thing…you can only send a DM if the person follows you. I’m sorry. If they won’t follow you back, you can’t DM them. Now this is not necessarily a bad thing. According to Mashable.com, there are over 100 MILLION registered Twitter users as of this post date. A huge number, although many folks have more than one account, so hard to know the exact unique number of Twitter users. Still..it’s a heckuva lot of people and if one day by accident every single user decided to DM you whether you were following them or not, well…that sure would be a lot of messages to handle. So maybe limiting DMs between mutual followers isn’t such a bad idea after all.

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NOTE: If you want to suggest changes to this or any other definition in our career dictionary, please feel free to add  your suggestions in a comment.