Twitter Tutorial
Update July 21, 2011: I just came across another Twitter tutorial: How to Use Twitter (and Why It’s Not a Waste of Time). It covers some of the gaps left in mine, and expands on other parts.
Let’s start off with a brief explanation of what Twitter is and isn’t, and define some of the lingo.
Twitter is what’s known as a microblogging platform. A single blog post, called a “tweet”, is limited to 140 characters (including spaces).
Your tweets are seen by your followers and you see the tweets of those you follow. There are other ways to view tweets of people you don’t follow, but we’ll get to that later.
Why would you want to tweet? Maybe you don’t have anything to say, or maybe you think no one would be interested in you say. You might be right, but you don’t necessarily have to say anything in order for Twitter to be a useful tool.
One thing it’s very good for is following breaking news. Because it’s more informal, you’ll often see comments by politicians, reporters, and bloggers that never make it into the mainstream media or appear in blog posts, so it gives you a better sense of the personalities behind the news. Of course, that very same informality also makes it easy for well-known figures to slip up. When they do, THEN you’ll see the gaffes and/or snark hit the mainstream media.
Apart from news & politics you can also follow all sorts of other people: friends, family, your favorite comedian, magazine, charity, or other organization—almost every individual or organization of any consequence has a Twitter account these days, so you’re pretty much guaranteed to fine SOMETHING of interest.
If you’re still not interested, you can stop reading now and perhaps amuse yourself by watching Twouble with Twitters or Celebrity Twitter Overkill, however if you think it’s something you might want to try (or if you’re new to Twitter), then I hope you’ll find some of what follows valuable.
SIGN-UP
Twitter’s sign-up process is short & sweet. Only three things are required: your name, email address, and a password. Obviously, many of you won’t want to use your real name (the name you enter will be displayed on your profile page). When you get to the second screen you’ll be able to choose a user name. Twitter offers some suggestions, but you can choose whatever you want provided it’s not already taken. That’s it.
Sign-up Form - Step 1
Sign-up Form - Step 2
INTERFACE
Settings – Go here first to configure all your settings before tweeting or following anyone. This is where you can change your avatar, password, email, etc. It also has numerous other important settings (see screenshots below—you may have to save the 2nd screenshot to your hard drive to see it full size once it pops up because it’s probably still going to be illegible unless you have a ginormous monitor).
How to get to the Settings Menus
Account & Application Settings
Okay, now that we’ve got that important step out of the way, let’s look at the main interface on your Home page and then walk through all the menus & whatnot. You already had a peek at it above, but here it is with a few more things highlighted:
Twitter Home
Search – Here you can search for subjects, hashtags, users and @mentions (more on what those mean later). You can also do a more extensive/assisted search for users to follow by clicking on the “Who to Follow” menu item. Caveat on searching for @mentions: You very well may NOT want to know what some people are saying about you—if you don’t believe me, try searching for @Lizardoid to see some of the abuse CJ gets.
Home – This is your main Twitter “timeline”. It’s the default page you’ll see when you log in. If you hover over each tweet in the timeline you’ll see a little arrow appear on the right—clicking that arrow will show you a short version of the user’s profile along with additional tools for that user in the sidebar (including the ability to block/report users for spam). You can also click on the user’s name to view his/her profile. Clicking on the timestamp of a tweet will display that tweet alone.
The other options you should see on hovering are Favorite, Retweet, and Reply. Favorties are just like favorites in your browser, except everyone can see what you’ve favorited. Retweets are verbatim repetitions by you of other users tweets. They are automatic & instantaneous when using the web interface (in Tweetdeck you have the option to do a “quoted retweet” where you can add your own comment—more on that later). Replies are exactly what they sound like, public responses to a user.
Profile – This page shows a timeline of only your tweets & retweets. This is the page other users see.
Messages – These are your Direct Messages (DM). They are private between you and the person you send them to. You cannot DM someone unless they are following you, and vice versa.
Who to Follow – This section provides a search form, recommendations on who to follow based on who you’re currently following and/or your interests, etc. A note on following/followers: You can start looking for other Lizards by checking who a known member such as myself is following (you can also check who’s following me as the list is much shorter). If someone starts following you with what looks like a valid LGF user nic, but you suspect it may be an impostor (there are many that the stalkers have created), then you can always come to LGF and view the account profile of the member in question to verify. Most members who tweet will (hopefully) have their twitter page linked to their profile.
Sidebar – The sidebar changes depending on your activity. For example, if you’re viewing a conversation it’ll show up in the sidebar. The default data on “Home” is your total number of tweets, a snippet of your most recent tweet, the 5 most recent people you followed/followed you, a couple of recommendations on who to follow, and trending topics. Here’s another screenshot with some more notes showing how it looks when you’ve clicked on a user’s name:
Sidebar Functionality
Lists – Creating lists is very helpful, especially when you use a client like Tweetdeck. You can name your lists whatever you want, and users can belong to more than one list. Lists can be designated public or private.
A FEW OTHER THINGS
A reply is any update posted by clicking the “Reply” button on another Tweet. A mention is any Twitter update that contains @username anywhere in the body of the Tweet. (Yes, this means that replies are also considered mentions.) More…
# (hashtags)
The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages. More…
Retweet (RT) – If you want to create a “quoted retweet” you could copy a user’s tweet, type RT into your tweet window, and then paste in the user’s tweet (being sure to include their @username) and any comments you want to add. This is all made much simpler in Tweetdeck (i.e. you just press a button and add your comment). You could also use via @, more…
Blocking – Blocked users cannot add you to their lists or follow you, however they can still view your tweets by going to your profiles page. Their @replies and @mentions won’t show up in your timeline, however it doesn’t stop them from showing up in the blocked user’s timeline, so anyone following him/her will still see them, and they will still show up in searches.
yFrog, Twitpic, etc. – Image (sharing) services for Twitter. I assume everyone is at least familiar with yFrog after the Weinergate debacle.
Twitterverse – The Twitter universe. Also known as the Twittersphere.
Twitterese – Twitter vocabulary. Also Twinglish, Twittish, more here and here…
Fail Whale – What you see on twitter.com when the system gets overloaded. Here’s an amusing page about it.
Familiarize yourself with The Twitter Rules. Among the things that are prohibited are impersonation, threats, copyright infringement, spam, etc. If a stalker starts impersonating or threatening you, or discloses your personal information, you should immediately report it to Twitter by submitting a support ticket.
Always remember: Tweets are forever.
Keep in mind that your all of your tweets, retweets, mentions, favorites, and (public) lists are viewable by everyone, so be careful hitting the send button—once something is out there you can go back and immediately delete it from your timeline, but probably not before a couple of thousand people have seen it and had a chance to do screencaps. Also, make sure that any “private” messages (i.e. DM’s) are actually such—and even then, you really shouldn’t consider ANYTHING you release out into the wilds of the internet to be truly private. If you don’t want people to know something, or if something you say could potentially bring you trouble or embarrassment, then don’t tweet it. Just a friendly reminder.
TWEETDECK
I was going to include a tutorial on using Tweetdeck as well, but I’m tapped out after doing this one on Twitter, so I’ll just write a couple of paragraphs. Suffice it to say that Tweetdeck will GREATLY improve your Twitter experience and it’s totally free. It’s available for the desktop, iPhone, Android, and Chrome (the iPad version is supposed to be “coming soon”). The desktop version requires the installation of Adobe AIR, but that only takes a few seconds.
I found Tweetdeck to be quite intuitive from day one, but a I’m a bit of a tech geek. Never fear though, if you go to the Desktop page at the Tweetdeck site you’ll find a list of links at the bottom of the page that explain how everything works. YouTube also has lots of tutorials, so even if you’re a bit tech-challenged you should be able to get up to speed in no time.
One last thing: I use Tweetdeck on my PC desktop & MacBook, but since it’s not available for the iPad I’ve been using an app called Osfoora HD for the past year—I love it as the interface is perfectly designed (IMO) to take maximum advantage of the iPad’s behavior. It’s also available for the iPhone for a couple of bucks.
Both Tweetdeck & Osfoora automatically shorten long URLs, allow for the sending of extended tweets (longer than 140 characters), support multiple Twitter accounts, create filters to block out unwanted tweets, and much, much more.
You’re on your own now. Go sign up and practice flapping those little hatchling wings!
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
• Twitter Help Center – twitter.com
• Twitter Glossary – twitter.com
• How to Speak Twitter – Bloomberg Business Week
• The Twitter Glossary – about.com
• Twitter Glossary – Twitter Fan Wiki
• The twitter glossary: what do all those terms mean? – Susan Mernit
