@user
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@user is a well-established internet convention for referring to someone using their online identity in a particular context, first used purely as static punctuation like in Flickr comments (and likely before), then first implemented in Twitter posts as a hyperlink to the user’s profile page, adopted by social media silos, notably Instagram, and adopted by users in print, street art, and other media like TV broadcasts as a universal way to find and follow them, for a while on Twitter and more recently on Instagram.
On some sites (e.g. Medium) and in some software (e.g. Mastodon), @user is literally used at a top-level path on the site’s domain as either the canonical URL for a user, or redirects there (e.g. Twitter).
Some sites redirect a /@user to the user profile at simply /user
Silo Support
There are numerous silos that have explicit support for linking @user in a plain text post to the profile of that user on their system, and/or support /@user paths.
- Twitter - hyperlinks @user, redirects /@user to /user
- Instagram - hyperlinks @user
- GitHub - hyperlinks @user
- Medium — may redirect /@user to user.medium.com, e.g. https://medium.com/@benwerd
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Previous Silo Support
Silos supported @user before they shut down
- Glitch - supported /@user paths e.g. glitch.com/@notwaldorf (2020 Internet Archive snapshot)
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