Author(s):

Chris Messina

In 140 characters:

"for" is used to notify one or more Twitter users that a message might be of interest to them. Equivalent to cc.

Description:

"For" is derived from Delicious and is a way of targeting a tweet to someone. cc serves the same purpose, and neither one is better. Some people may be more familiar with the Delicious syntax and may therefore prefer it. "For" may also be more readable, but requires an additional character.

Twitter currently does not directly support "for" or "cc" addressing. It does track "mentions", however, and so these slashtags are just convenient ways of making a tweet with targeted information more readable. 

See also

Chris Blow mentions for targeting in his post on Slashtags for Citizen Editors.

More Slashtags