Recently, a friend of mine joined Twitter. He finally got past the “why would people care what I’m doing?” phase and now he’s excited about it. He’s a n00b though and there’s a lot of things flying by him that he’s not understanding. I answered his questions then thought, maybe there’s others out there that could use some help with what I call “Twitter Commands”.
Sure there are a lot of “How To’s” and “Beginner’s Guide” for Twitter. But what if you’ve got most of it down. You’re signed up, you’re following people, they’re following you. You just want to understand what all this secret language stuff is right?
Well, here’s my attempt at answering that question. Did I forget one? Leave a comment below.
Update (7/8/2009): If you like this post, please comment below. You can also follow me on Twitter and say hi! I’d love to hear from you. Thanks.
1 – @Reply’s
“So what’s with all these @ symbols everywhere?”
Adding an @ immediately followed by a Twitter username is a way to acknowledge another Twitter user. Adding that on to the beginning of your message is considered a reply, kind of like an email reply (actually, it’s more like hitting “Reply To All” in an email). Much like an email reply, you’re commenting on or answering that user (or several users if you have more than one in a single post). Replies come up in your normal Twitter stream, but they’re also easy to find by clicking on the @{yourusername} nav item from your home page.
2 – Direct Messages (DM)
“Someone just told me to DM them. How do I do that?”
Direct Messages (or DM’s) are like private messages between you and another Twitter user. When you want to send someone a message that only they will see, you send a DM. The syntax for sending a DM is:
d username message
So as an example, if you wanted to send me a direct message you would type:
d CantonDog Hi, this is a direct message!
Notice the space after the ‘d’. Unlike an @reply where there is no space between the @ and the username, you need that space right after the ‘d’ in order to send the direct message. There’s one more catch, each user in the message needs to be following the other in order for it to work. If you’re trying to DM me, you need to be following @CantonDog AND I need to be following you.
3 – Favorites
“I have a favorites link in my nav bar. What’s that for?”
Favorites are pretty easy, they’re exactly what they seem like. If you see a post that you like, or someone posts a link to a site you want to check out later, you can favorite that Tweet. Then later, you can go back to your favorites and see that post. A week, a month or a year later. Whenever!
4 – Retweet (RT)
“I keep seeing the letters RT in my stream. What does RT mean?”
Retweets (or RT’s) are a way to quote another Twitter user. If someone posts something cool, funny, thought provoking, stupid or whatever…you can quote them by sending out a RT. RT’s are handy because it’s a way to make a message viral.
The syntax for RT’s is as follows:
RT @username post
For example, my friend is new to Twitter and because of that, doesn’t have a ton of followers. If he posts something that I think would be helpful to others, I can RT his message. Now, his message isn’t limited to just his followers. Everyone who’s following me will also see the message. If someone in my network also likes the post, they can RT it again and everyone following them will see it (and so on and so on).
This can also help my friend get more followers. After I RT his post, if someone who is following me likes the subject of his post, they can follow him because he’s credited in the post. Here’s an example of how someone would RT me:
RT @CantonDog Remember, your dog is the only one in your life that loves you more than himself.
5 – Overheard (OH)
“OK, I get RT, but what the heck is OH?”
The letters OH when followed by a colon such as OH: stand for “Overheard”. For example you might see a post like:
OH: Isn’t it obvious? I was licking your eyeball.
Which just means that the person sending the Tweet, overheard someone say that. It could be someone they know or it could be a total random stranger. It’s usually something funny (or funny if taken out of context) or controversial. Sometimes, the OH is qualified by a location such as:
OH at coffee shop:
or
OH at the movies:
6 – Hash Tags (#)
“Why do I see # symbols everywhere. They seem to mean nothing”
Well, yeah, they seem to mean nothing…until you realize what they are and how powerful they can be. The # symbol is called a hash tag. Putting a # symbol in your tweet followed by a word (or words put together with no spaces) is a way to categorize or tag your post. This way, if other people are talking about the same subject or event, they can use the same hash tag. This serves more than one purpose.
One purpose hash tags serve, is that you can do a search on Twitter and see who is talking about that particular subject. For example, this past weekend was the NFL Draft. A Twitter search for #nfldraft will show you posts of all kinds of people talking about it.
Another purpose for the hash tags are to see what’s being talked about on Twitter right now. Looking at the right hand side of your home page or search.twitter.com and you’ll see a list of “Trending Topics” or what’s hot on Twitter at the moment. You can easily make up your own hash tag just by including a # followed by a keyword in your tweet. Give it a try!
6b – #followfriday
“What’s the deal with the hash tag #followfriday?”
Some hash tags take on a life of their own. One such tag is #followfriday. The hash tag #followfriday is a way to give props to people who you think add value to your network. Each week, on Friday’s you can choose one or many Twitter users and tag them with a #followfriday hash tag. This lets your followers know who you think are good people to follow.
Some people will post just the hash tag #followfriday then a bunch of @usernames. While this is fine, and a lot of people mimic this action, it’s preferable to give your followers a reason why you’re recommending these people. For that reason, I like to only include one (maybe two) user(s) in a #followfriday I post. Maybe my reasons for following the person don’t pertain to you…wouldn’t you like to know that quicker instead of having to visit a bunch of bio’s?
Mashable has a great post on the origin of #followfriday here.
7 – Short URL’s
“Why does everyone use the same URL for their links? like http://tinyurl.com ?”
Since Twitter is limited to only 140 characters per tweet, space is at a premium. Some URL’s can be quite long. If they’re not shortened, they don’t leave much explanation for why you’re posting it. This is where tinyurl comes into play. Tinyurl.com is Twitter’s default URL shortener. If you put in a regular URL in your post, Twitter will use the Tinyurl service to shorten it for you.
There are others too though, http://is.gd is one I use frequently because of their easy to use FireFox plugin. Another one I’ll use is http://bit.ly because it keeps track of how many people clicked on your link. This can be handy to see how popular your links are.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this post helped you sort out some of the seemingly encrypted code found on Twitter. It can seem like it’s own language when you’re first getting used to it, and it kind of is…but once you know the key’s pretty simple to figure out.
In a future post, I’ll go over some of the third party applications used to access Twitter…so stay tuned.
Did I miss something? Do you have a question about Twitter? Or maybe you just want to add something to my post above? Post in the comments below. And as always, thanks for reading.
