Steve Poland of TechCrunch says:
Currently, people are using “@(username)” to publicly reply to other Twitter messages — which can be annoying if you’re a friend of a user that is replying to what another user said (and you don’t even know what was originally said).
I disagree. I like it. It has led me onto some interesting conversations on Twitter, conversations I would not normally have heard. When I read one end of a conversation I can decide whether to follow it by adding the other side, or not. Up to me and no hidden messages or back-channels.
