Web Applications Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for power users of web applications. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I am following a certain person on twitter. I then started following another person who is also following him. I noticed that after I did this I could see the tweets that this person was making to that person which I did not see previously.
How can I see all the tweets that people are making to a particular individual? Do I have to follow all of his followers, or is there an easier way?
To see all tweets, from anyone, directed to a certain user, you can simply search for "@username". For example, try https://twitter.com/search?q=%40codinghorror to see all replies to Jeff Atwood.
I think I originally misunderstood the question, here's my original response:
Yeah, person A's Twitter replies to person B (tweets that begin with B's @username) are only visible in the Twitter stream of those followers of A who also follow B. I think this feature is fairly non-obvious, especially for new users.
To my knowledge, the easiest way to see also the "@ replies" (without following the other user) is to go to the user's profile (at the Twitter website: http://twitter.com/username, or through some Twitter client) and see their full tweet list there. However, then you'll of course see "@ replies" to everyone, not just to the individual you were interested in. To put it otherwise: no, there isn't an easier way. To see full "conversations" in your feed, you'll have to follow both (or all) parties taking part.
Twitter offers an advanced search.
After you have searched with the bar at the top (on the web version) you will see a column on the left with the words Search filters. Click on the word "show" to get to Advanced Search. Clicking on "Advanced Search" will give you many more options.
One of the options is under a heading "People" and it says "To these accounts:" — you can then fill in whatever username you wish and it'll perform that search.
Alternatively, the short-hand for that (if you wish to skip the advanced search page and just type directly into the search bar at the top) is:
to:username
Obviously, replace "username" with the relevant Twitter user's username.
