Twitter and Foursquare

[dolmio]

I've 2 questions

a) can anyone look at my tweets? What about people who haven't actually signed up to follow me? Would I know they've looked at my tweets in this instance?

b) When someone's facebk/twitter a/c says things liked 'x has just checked in here', have they actively done something with their mobile at that point in time to tell FourSquare where they are.. or does it just do it automatically once you've generally signed up to FourSquare?

a) Yes, anyone who knows your twitter name will be able to see your tweets. They won't see your @ mentions to others, unless they are following both of you. You won't know if they have looked.

b) No idea, don't get the attraction of that. Why do you have to tell the world exactly where you are all the time?

a) No, tweets don't have to be public and read by everybody. By default Twitter does "public tweets", which is what MmeLindor is describing. However you can also do "protected tweets" which can only be read by certain people that you have approved. Instructions for this are here:
support.twitter.com/entries/14016-about-public-and-protected-accounts

b) No idea, I agree with MmeLindor here, I've got no interest in telling the world exactly where I am, even if they do promise me it's top secret.

Oh, good point BadgerPaws. If you don't want everyone to read your posts, protect your account. It does limit the amount of followers you are likely to get, and your tweets may be RTed by someone else.

"your tweets may be RTed by someone else."

No, you cannot retweet protected tweets (since when did tweet become both a verb and a noun?).

If you protect them only people you want can read them and they cannot just rebroadcast then to the whole by retweeting.

I have sometimes had a warning that the tweet is from protected user and do I really want to RT them. Have never carried on and done so, so assumed that it was possible.

Apparently it's not....
support.twitter.com/articles/91886-why-can-t-i-retweet-certain-tweets

But that said I've never tried it, but not working that way would be a major blow to Twitter's security credentials so I would be very surprised if they're not telling the truth.

Thanks, never knew that. I did wonder about it but never wanted to try it out.