If a DM falls in a forest . . .

On Twitter, when you try to send a direct message to someone using the web interface, by entering “d nobody My message” (where “nobody” is a username), and the person you are trying to reach doesn’t follow you, you get a nice error message:

The same is true when you use SMS or IM to interact with Twitter.

However, if you use a Twitter client, what happens?

On Twitterific, nothing. The message appears to be sent, nothing shows up your timeline, no error occurs.

Is this a limitation of the API, or of the application’s handling of it?

Update:

@Twhirl tells me (via Twitter) that:

twhirl should display an error message informing you about it.

Maybe time to change? I sent the twitterific developers a note letting them know of the bug.

What does your twitter client do? Tell me in the comments, please.