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Twitter: The basics

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service–a way to contact many people all at once. A user can write 1 or 2  sentences(140 characters limit) to pass along information to anyone “following” them.

Here are the main terms while using Twitter:

- Twitter Handle: Also called Username

- To-Follow: To subscribe to someone’s updates on Twitter. You do this by clicking the “Follow” button on that specific person’s Twitter page, which can be found at http://twitter.com/USERNAME. (Insert the specific person’s username into the URL, like (http://twitter.com/tugsearch). When you follow someone, their updates will be displayed on your Twitter page so you know what they are doing.

- Follower: A person who has subscribed to receive your updates. You can see your total number of followers on your Twitter profile page

- Update: Also known as a tweet. They can be no longer than 140?characters. You post your update in the white text box under “What are you doing?”

- @Reply: A public message sent from one Twitter user to another by putting @USERNAME at the beginning of the tweet

- Direct Message (or DM): A private message sent from one Twitter user to another by either clicking the “message” link on their profile or typing D USERNAME

- Twitter Stream: A list of a person’s real?time updates. Every time you post an update, it goes into your Twitter stream, which is found on your account page also at http://twitter.com/USERNAME

- Hashtag(#): A tool to aggregate the conversation surrounding an event or theme. Created by combining# as a prefix to the word, acronym or phrase (#WORD).

- Retweet(or RT): To repeat what someone else has already tweeted. People do this if someone has said something especially valuable and they want their own network to see the information too. (Example: Retweet @USERNAME: Check out this cool resource).

Read more about our Social Media Optimisation services.

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 Posted on: Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 9:40 am
 Social Media, Twitter.
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