Never Miss Those Important @Mentions, as Push Notifications Come to Twitter

Want to know instantly who’s talking about you on Twitter? Well, now you can get real-time notifications on your phone, as Twitter has just announced push notifications for @mentions.

Up til now, push notifications for Twitter on the iPhone have been only available via other apps, such as Boxcar.

The default setting for notifications is for accounts that you follow, but you can adjust it for all mentions. Smartphone battery beware. But that distinction is important, as it gives users better control over their notifications.

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The notifications for @mentions will initially be available on SMS and on the latest version of the official Twitter iPhone app. In addition, Twitter will also add the functionality for push notifications for Messages on the iPhone. This feature is already available for SMS and with Twitter for Blackberry, and will be coming “soon” for Twitter for Android and for the Windows phone.

To set up the SMS notifications, you can go to twitter.com/devices and check the boxes under “Text message notifications.” You can also text “set mentions all” to turn on notifications for @mentions from everyone, rather than just those whom you follow, and “set mentions off” to turn off @mentions notifications altogether.

As it’s touted as a real-time communication platform, push notifications are an important feature for Twitter to add. Do you plan to activate push notifications for Twitter? And do you think push notifications will change how you use Twitter?

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