What Eisenstein and Pavalanathan found was that people used regionalisms like “hella,” slang like “nah” and “cuz,” emoticons like :), and other informal language more in the tweets that @mentioned another user, while the same people used a more standardized, formal style in their tweets with hashtags. They theorized that, just as in person we’d generally talk more formally when addressing a roomful of people than when talking one-on-one, we’re directing a tweet with a hashtag towards a large group of people. Our @mentions, on the other hand, are more informal, only noticed by a select few—and
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