Twitter – What are you doing?

This post was published long ago, when I was a student and an amateur blogger. The links might be outdated and content may not be useful anymore. Please read this content keeping its age in mind.

Still wondering what Twitter is all about? Well,Twitter is a microblogging, social networking website which lets you write and read messages of up to 140 characters including all punctuations and spaces.

At Twitter, all you simply have to be doing is to keep answering the question: “WHAT IS HAPPENING?” .The messages, which can’t be more than 140 characters are known as TWEETS. Twitter works equally well from your desktop or mobile phone (m.twitter.com).

Before you get started, you can just try and go to search.twitter.com Then, in the search box, try searching for a company or a few key topics of your interest e.g “blogging” . Check through the result and this will help you get a sense of how you want to engage on Twitter.

So, How Do I Get Started?

To get started, just go to http://twitter.com/signup and click on the SIGN UP link. Signing up for an account takes just a few minutes. To help people recognize and trust your account, fill out your profile (http://twitter.com/account/settings) completely and even include a picture.

Once you complete your registration, you can start TWEETING and FOLLOWING people. To find good people to follow, go to search.twitter.com and type in keywords of your choice. In the search results, you will see list of people related to the keyword you searched for. When you find a good candidate, look under their picture for the FOLLOW button. Click on this and you will start receiving their tweets.

Following somebody means you have agreed to be receiving their tweets. People that follow you (i.e FOLLOWERS) will also be receiving any tweet you post on twitter.

So, What Can I Be Tweeting?

Your tweets, which cannot be more than 140 characters, might be anything which can be tips, links to interesting stuffs (news,article, blogposts, pictures, music downloads) etc People following you will also like it when you say hi, respond to their questions, comments, complaints and jokes.

Any Terms To Familiarize Myself With?

Yes, there are some terms you will need to familiarize yourself with for you to easily understand how twitter works. The major ones are highlighted below:

To FOLLOW somebody is to subscribe to their messages.

A TWEET is an individual message.

A DM or direct message is a private message on Twitter.

RT or RETWEET is to repost a message from somebody else on Twitter

TRENDING TOPICS are the most-discussed terms/topics on Twitter at any given moment.

@username is a public message to or about an individual on Twitter.

A hashtag – the # symbol followed by a term/word and included in tweets  – is a way categorizing all the posts on a topic.

Why Use Twitter?

You can use twitter to:

• To build relationships with people of similar interest with yours.
• To respond to comments and questions from your followers
• To ask questions and learn new things
• To post links to things people would find interesting
• To retweet messages you would like to share
• To respond to customer service issues quickly if you have a business
• To engage in discussion on a public issue or a social cause etc.
• There’s’ lots More…

I think I have provided sufficient information about tweeter. I suggest Stay tuned to my my updates on twitter and don’t forget to tweet this post ! As I have said people use twitter in their own styles, I would love to listen how you are using tweeter in the comment section below 🙂