How To Send Direct Messages In Twitter To People Who Don’t Follow You? [Hacks And Mods]
By on September 20th, 2008

Twitter does not allow users to send direct messages to people who do not follow you, though that may act as a deterrent to stop spamming, direct messages are much more better than sending a message via a reply.

Tech Spikes has a nice hack that will allow you to send a direct message to people who do not follow you in twitter.

To send a DM to a non-follower in Twitter, you have to derivetheir DM URL to create a DM message. Here’s the syntax

http://twitter.com/direct_messages/create/twitterusername

Replace the twitterusername with the twitter id of the person to whom you wish to send the DM and you can send a direct message to a user without them following you.

Hack Tip From Tech Spikes

Update: This trick might no longer work

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Author: Keith Dsouza Google Profile for Keith Dsouza
I am the editor-in-chief and owner of Techie Buzz. I love coding and have contributed to several open source projects in the past. You can know more about me and my projects by visiting my Personal Website. I am also a social networking enthusiast and can be found active on twitter, you can follow Keith on twitter @keithdsouza. You can click on my name to visit my Google+ profile.

Keith Dsouza has written and can be contacted at keith@techie-buzz.com.
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  • http://blog.twilightfairy.in Twilight Fairy

    I would appreciate if you give credit to the “original” source rather than from where you saw this post. If you would see the post on techspike, you would see that Narayan saw this hack on my blog.

  • http://owenblacker.livejournal.com Owen Blacker

    It doesn’t work; they’ve fixed their bug.

    “You cannot send messages to users who are not following you.”

    Thankfully.

    If I wanted someone to be able to DM me and to be able to see their tweets, I’d follow them. They can @-message me instead and I’ll see it on http://search.twitter.com/search?q=owenblacker

  • http://sprnch.com SpRnch

    Thank gosh this is fixed

  • jas

    this is not hacking

  • http://www.nextlevelblogger.com Christian

    With respect, I don’t know why you’d post this loophole on your site, because they only people who would find value in it are people who wanted to spam users on this site. Am I wrong?

    • Kristy Johnson

      you’re wrong..i just wanted to send a message to an old friend but whatever

  • Nick Wood

    Tried this at 8.14am on the 26th sept 09 and no longer works !

  • Eddie Kuns

    @Christian, there are plenty of valid reasons to want to send a message to someone not following you that won't be SPAM. One person I follow (but who does not follow me) has their software resending the same tweet once a day at the same time each day, and to boot, the tweet references a blog URL that doesn't go to a blog but to the same tweet. A tweet with a URL referencing itself rather than the intended blog site.

    It would be nice to be able to direct message this person in case she doesn't know.

  • http://gooble.no/ Thomas

    It is not working :(

    • http://keithdsouza.com Keith Dsouza

      @Thomas – Yes Twitter has blocked this flaw out, so you will not be able to use it anymore

  • vandana

    totally worked for me! I just sent a message across my two accounts, and it worked! thanks a lot.

    • macer

      How did u do that can u explain to me please.

      • Brie

        they're lying that mess doesn't work. i just tried it.

    • manju

      its nt working….

    • manju

      how it happened.pls tell me also…

  • http://majesticislam.wordpress.com Faiz

    This method doesn't works. I think it is not at all possible to DM someone who don't follow you.

    • http://networkmarketingleadsgeneration.blogspot.com/ adamtaha

      @Christian, there is a reason I'd like to use such a method but it doesn't work.

      One of the reason is, I get people tweeting me for example..

      "Would you like 10,000 followers this week etc etc.."

      And this person has only two followers.

      Instead of embarrassing her and pay my ego, I rather direct message her to give her advise and why it is best to first set an example, and do so by saying it nicely.

      She maybe new to social media and marketing, and sometimes a little help is needed. Whether the person listens to the advise or not, is fine.

      Yes, agreed, some may try to use it to spam but there are some of us, who care enough, to give to people and also care enough about the industry, to try and educate so it does go nuts even more.

      Adam Taha

  • THU

    Guess what punk; it didn't work. You damn spam didn't work. They've fixed the whole you know, spam business.

  • barry

    http://twitter.com/direct_messages/create/ does not work. comes up and says you can't dm someone who does not follow you.

  • vena

    Sorry, it did not work anymore…any other path? thanks

  • http://gracelyne.wordpress.com gracy

    doesnt work!

  • sam

    hey i tried this trick and it doesnt work…it says ''u cant send DM if the person isnt following u''

  • LLLLLKEvi

    It’s not working for this method ==

  • http://www.station-marketing.com Ateliers SEO

    Obviously, Twitter has changed its programming to stop that backdoor, hence rendering this article obsolete. I hope that Google has a strategy to protect the search results of obsolete information to appear to its first page. I see more and more expired result at 1st serp and it is becoming an annoyance for all of us. Soon enough someone will find a better way to rank pages and if it happens not to be Google, we might start to see the decline of a giant!

  • http://rapidtechreview.com/ anandy

    gotcha thanks

  • Silvia Salazar

    PLEASE tell me how you follow someone on TWITTER!!! because i really want 2 do that i better get a answer tmro!if i dont i’ll sue u !got that ,and tell me how 2 create a Myspace acount wile ur at it pretty please?oh!i almost forgot, u should really watch that show Tosh.O !
    -Silvia

  • http://www.last.fm/user/AndoDoug AndoDoug

    Great plan but how to get to the twitter direct message inbox you describe?

    • http://www.last.fm/user/AndoDoug AndoDoug

      That was a question for another website lol. But my question is how do you get to where a direct message can be sent, they’re saying you have to go in through twitter.com’s main page to get to where you can actually mail the direct message (using your ingenius technique)

  • Frances

    Variation on the question. I have been doing “Reply” function on tweets from people who do not follow me. It appears to wrok in that there is no error msg. But, when I look detail of tweets on their profile, I never see my “Reply”. Do they get it or not? Or must I just @ them?

  • Kevin

    My friend used my computer to follow someone on twitter. The person that was being followed then sent me a message on facebook asking me to check out her facebook page. I am not friends with either person. The request was in my friend finders part of FB. How can that be possible when it was my friends twitter that was used, but on my computer. I am thinking that it was automatically generated or did the other person send it on purposed.

  • http://www.ave-nir.com Avenir

    I agree that know.. But that url not valid, please share how can i send free automatic twitter direct messages..

  • CBFan1000

    I didn’t work for me!!! :’(

  • Stu

    Only if this worked it would be great! But making people click on this “help” page is wrong as it doesn’t work snd is misleading! I do wish that proper technological scientists find a way to send a DM to someone as I reallt want to send one of my friends a message but I can’t! :( That it doesn’t work!

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