Twitter for Dummies – part 4: The Geeky Art of Nerdy Tweets

You have successfully created your Twitter account. You read part 1 of this series and have some pretty good idea what you will use Twitter for. You understand the importance of building social communities, and which tools can help you with those tasks…

And then… the blank Twitter prompt is staring in your face. What to do now?

Certain signs, abbreviations or keywords have a fixed meaning in the Tweet-o-sphere. Here is an overview of the Twitter syntax.

1. Handles:

Every user on Twitter has a unique user name (or call it “handle”). Within tweets, we refer to another user by prefixing his or her user name with the “@” sign.

“@JohnnyB” refers to the Twitter user handle “JohnnyB”.

Within a tweet, we use it like this:

Looking forward to meet @BloggerTip tonight

“@BloggerTip” refers to the Twitter username of this blog, BlogTips.

If you know someone’s user name, you can find their latest tweets with the URL http://twitter.com/username.

E.g. http://twitter.com/BloggerTip

By using uppercase and lowercase characters, users make their handle easier to read. For instance, “@ChangeThruInfo” is easier to grasp than “@changethruinfo”, no?

2. Replies:

when a Tweet starts with a handle name, it is a public message to that Twitter user:

@BloggerTip what u think about: “5 reasons Facebook is better than Twitter for your business” http://bit.ly/1suvPTC

3. Direct messages:

Tweets starting with “D” followed by a user name are private messages from one Twitter user to the other. Contrary to replies, these messages can not be seen by other users. Note that both Twitter users need to follow each other before “D” between them is allowed.

D @BloggerTip check out “Facebook better than Twitter for your business?” http://bit.ly/1suvPTC

4. Hash Tags:

Any word starting with the “#” hash sign, is a hash tag, indicating the subject of the tweet. More on the effective use of hash tags in the next post.

“Facebook better than Twitter for your business?” http://bit.ly/1suvPTC #socialmedia

The hash tag identifies the topic of this tweet as “#socialmedia”.

There are no fixed rules for hashtags, other than the need to start with the ‘hash’ sign. Popular hash tags come and go. Some like #earthhour (the day we switch off our lights for one hour, remember?) shot to the most popular hashtag on March 28, the day of the actual event, and then disappeared as fast as they came.

Other hash tags like #iranelection became a way to tag all Tweets about the Iran post-election protests. #CNNfail protested the lack of coverage of certain news events by mainstream media.

#nomaintenance originated around the same time and was a popular tag which pushed Twitter to cancel their plans for maintenance down time one particular night…

5. Retweets:

And last but not least: any tweet starting with “RT” indicates you are re-broadcasting someone else’s tweet.

For instance, when @BloggerTip tweets:

“Facebook better than Twitter for your business?” http://bit.ly/1suvPTC

I can rebroadcast it as follows:

RT @BloggerTip “Facebook better than Twitter for your business?” http://bit.ly/1suvPTC

Retweets are at the core of what makes Twitter more than just a micro-blogging tool. In the next part, we will detail how to retweet effectively and how to make it easy for others to retweet you…

So stay tuned for Twitter for Dummies – part 5: 10 tips for effective tweeting

Additional reading:

The Official Twitter Text Commands

Cartoon courtesy Geek and Poke

Tagged as: tools, Twitter