LinkLog For Anyone Needing Help With Twitter
I joined micro-blogging site Twitter last November (@eyevandrago). My younger brother (@mrjonsmith) tipped me off to it. Initially, I found a few old colleagues, started following some celebrities and news outlets, and used it mainly as a satellite function to update my Facebook status. I installed TinyTwitter on my Blackberry in order to stop burning valuable text messages on status updates…and that was pretty much it.
Lately I’ve been playing a little more in the Twitter Universe. I’m starting to see how it functions on a larger scale. It really is a fun platform with a lot of potential beyond just updating your Facebook status. Today, I set out to verse myself in the different functions, capabilities, and vocabulary unique to this burgeoning website.
Of course, there are over a million people who use Twitter very fluently, and probably would scoff at my relative ignorance. But as I talk to friends, family, and co-workers about all my new online distractions, I’m surprised to find that most people either a) have no idea what Twitter is b) have heard of it but think it’s retarded or c) signed up for an account and didn’t see the point. So these links are meant to help them.
A good place to start is Twitter’s own “Getting Started” page:
http://twitter.zendesk.com/forums/10711/entries
Twitter uses several of it’s own abbreviations and symbols. If you’ve ever wondered what the RT, OH, @, or # mean in a tweet this explains it:
http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2008/08/twitter-101/
So you’ve searched your email contacts, found a few people, but now you want to know who to follow? This site lists several ways to do just that:
http://www.squidoo.com/follow_twitter_people
OK now you’re following people, you know how to tweet, @reply, direct message, and #hashtag topics, but you’re starting to feel the futility of doing that for your mere 7 followers. This site talks about ways to build your following (sounds like a cult, right?). There’s also list of the top 100 followed people on Twitter:
http://www.doshdosh.com/how-to-get-more-twitter-followers/
Here’s a good, detailed blog post about many ways to take advantage of Twitter:
http://www.meeting-zone.com/2009/02/19/the-several-habits-of-wildly-successful-twitter-users/
The Twitter Fan-Wiki has lots of fun info:
One of the coolest things about Twitter is the search function. You can go to their search page and type in anything you’re interested in. See what people are talking about, see what’s happening in the world. You’ll enjoy it, I promise:
So go forth young padawans, open a twitter account, and start expressing yourself in 140 characters or less. Oh, and don’t forget to follow me.
