Solution: Twitter app and enabling DM notifications in new device
 

I spent the last few hours trying to figure this one out, and I think I discovered the answer, so I'll share it here to save others' sanity.

I was upgrading from my Blackberry Curve 9300 with OS BB 6 (not eligible for BB OS 7, at least not with my provider) to a new Blackberry Curve 9360 which came with BB OS 7 pre-installed. I initially thought my problems were related to the new OS, but it appears not.

The device transfer wizard didn't do to well; in the end a backup/restore and reinstall apps probably would have been easier.

PROBLEM 1: I was trying to get Twitter 2.1 to work and was having problems upgrading without using BB App World. An old version of the app had transferred over to the new device, but wouldn't upgrade. Solution: to get Twitter 2.1 after transferring to a new device, delete Twitter app, restart, visit mobile.twitter.com in BB browser to get link to download new version* (use the second Blackberry download link, for downloading without App World).

PROBLEM 2: I was not getting notifications of DMs on my home screen. I had my SIM card in the new phone, but I was still accessing twitter with my old phone via Wifi. I was DMing between two devices while logged into both accounts on both phones (and on a laptop web browser, and on the BB browser!). I discovered that when two Blackberry devices are logged in with their Twitter app to the same account, DM notifications get sent to only one, or neither. Also, DM notifications only appear on the home screen for the Twitter account that's active in the Twitter app.

Once I logged out of both accounts on the old phone, I was able to reliably DM between two accounts on the new phone, and receive notification of new DMs when switching to the other account. Logging out allowed me to receive notifications when sending Twitter DMs from other platforms.

I should add a caveat: some of the e-mail notifications of DMs were slow to come, and the web browser clients were a bit dodgy, so there is a possibility that all of my wrangling was hocus-pocus and the issue was really a Twitter server problem.

*Other notes on distinguishing between notification settings:
- In Twitter app > Options, it is not necessary for either "Tweet refresh in background" or "Notify on new tweets" to be checked to receive DM notifications
- In Twitter app > Manage Accounts (via options or via the button in the profile switch feature), Select profile > Menu > Account Options, it is not necessary for "Notify on replies and mentions" to be checked to receive DM notificaitons
- In BB Options > Sound and Ring Tones > Sounds for Selected Profile > Other Applications - Notifiers, there are three options for Twitter. "Twitter - Message" allows you to set how the notification sounds (or if it's silent in a given sound profile), but this option does not control whether the notification is activated. There are plenty of articles offering advice on how to de-activate this notification, but my goal was to get them working.

(I also found the browser worked much faster on the old phone once I took out the SIM card! Go figure!)

- RG>