How does the Twitter @ thing work?

[Â Â Â Â Â]

I know it's when you are talking to someone but do they receive a message when you do this?

[bunny_li]

@replies are public replies directed at a specific user in response to one of their updates. It will show up on the user's page. If they have their phone device set up to receive updates then they will get a text message.

[Ali H]

When you type @the person's username, they don't recieve a message but when they go to their 'home' if it is a recent enough tweet (twitter post) than they can see it under all their contacts posting. They can also go to @Replies on the right hand side, and will see all the @ messages they have gotten.