Using Twitter
Are you new to Twitter? This page provides an introduction to how it works as well as some tips to help make it a more enjoyable experience.
I’ll skip the basics and ‘what is twitter’ stuff and get straight down to business…
Quick Tips:
1] A Tweet is limited to 140 characters including the recipient’s username (this historically was to make it compatible with simple SMS Text messaging on mobile phones)
2] Starting a tweet with a username will send the tweet to that person, it will also be seen by people that follow both that person and yourself
3] Putting anything in front of the tweet before putting the username means that it will not only go to that user but also to all of your followers (even if they are not following the other person)
4] Direct Messages, DM’s, are private between you and the person you are sending it to and cannot be seen by anyone else. You can only send a DM to someone that is following you and vice versa.
5] To send a DM in most Twitter applications type a letter ‘D’ followed by a space and then type the friends username
6] Tweets with no username in them also go to all of your followers
7] All tweets, except for DM’s, can be seen in the public timeline or via the search feature. Be careful what you write!
8] Don’t be afraid to block anyone that is rude or weird (other than myself), this can be done easily by looking at their account on twitter.com and clicking on the word ‘block’ on the right hand side of the screen
9] You can upload photos to various twitter picture hosting sites, but twitpic.com is the most popular because people can add comments to the picture which are then tweeted, pictures can be deleted too. Check mine for example at http://twitpic.com/photos/mkayes
10] Using a Twitter client (application or program) to Tweet with will make life a lot easier. Most people prefer Tweetdeck as it is very easy to use and very flexible.
Follow Friday? (aka Hashtags / Trending Topics):
You will see a lot of tweets with words that are preceded with a hash ‘#’, the hash & accompanying word is how twitter groups tweets of similar interest together to create trends – somewhat like the music charts!
For example on Friday you will see #followfriday or #ff in use. This is where people recommend good twitterers for others t0 follow.
There isn’t any setup needed to use create hashtag, you just need to type it in your tweet and that’s it.
Is there anything else you can think of that should be added to the tips above? If so just tweet.
Using Twitter
