Twitter primer

Alex Johnson — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:43:13 +0000

At the impromptu Blogging 101 session at my apartment I asked the group to keep the dialogue going and to get in touch if they had further questions or needed to be walked through anything on a one-to-one basis. I had a request from Laura last night for some twitter instructions, I watched over 15 YouTube how-to’s meaning to just link something but couldn’t’ find any I liked, so I replied with a step-by-step email to the group instead, and thought I would post it here too.

Sign up with your email and a password
Create a username – this will appear at the end of your url, like in Myspace so choose carefully, i recommend using your name if you can, you want people to be able to find you easily
Search your hotmail/gmail/IM contacts for friends that are already on twitter https://twitter.com/invitations
Manually follow people by searching for their name or their twitter username – if you know it – for example I am alexjohnson100, christa is xter, andy is aspersions and jane is janesez
Then click the box that says follow underneath their picture. If you want to stop following someone, just click remove.
You can also choose to have certain people’s updates sent to your phone by sms – i wouldn’t recommend this now, though it is useful in other situations.
There are 2 main pages – your “profile page” – where you can see all your updates listed, and “home page” which is your friend timeline, here you can see updates of everyone you follow
Updates are 140 words or less, most people update every few hours – think of it like your facebook status but public – also you can use it to ask questions or to post links for things you have found – the question twitter asks is – ‘what are you doing now?’
You can update through

(a) the website
(b) by sms (set up here http://twitter.com/devices)

(c) or through a desktop application that you can download (twitterific – for macs – is the most popular http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific)

(d) or online via your phone – not available for all – from m.twitter.com

If you want to put a url in your update, most people shorten it by using a service called tinyurl http://tinyurl.com/
If you want to refer to a person within your update put @ before their name – example http://twitter.com/alexjohnson100/statuses/923955330 this creates a hyperlink so that other people can click through to the mentioned person’s profile automatically
This is also useful as some people have updates set up on their phone so that they can get a text everytime someone mentions their name, film, or any other keyword that they’ve chosen
This is something you can do too by setting up a tracking system on your phone or IM (Instructions here – scroll down to second post http://blog.twitter.com/2007_09_01_archive.html)
If you want to mention a place use # before the location – example https://twitter.com/saskiawb/statuses/890356597
There are two ways to communicate on twitter

(a) through your friends timeline – if you see something you want to respond to click the arrow on the right – this is important as it creates a trail of responses that other readers can track back if they want to
(b) As above – refer to someone by name, using the @ system

Obviously the more people you have following you the better as it means that your community is larger, and everytime you post something it turns up in more peoples’ timelines – there are several ways to do this

(a) follow people – they will likely receive an email that you are following them and this prompts them to check out your profile and follow you
(b) become involved in discussions – you become more visible to the community if that person responds, as their friends will see the response on their timeline – it’s a public forum – don’t be shy
(c) outside of twitter – post your twitter url (twitter.com/alexjohnson100)

where people are likely to see it, click on it and press follow – for instance in your email signature

Twitter netiquette (internet etiquette): remember that everytime you post something it will appear in your followers’ timelines, so keep the personal back and forth discussions to a minimum Here’s a good article on twitter nettiquette http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/the_thoughtful_user_guide/writing_my_twitter_etiquette_article_14_ways_to_use_twitter_politely.php – in particular the point: if a comment is rude or inappropriate in life, it’s rude on twitter! Don’t worry to much about reading up on netiquette though, like most social platforms like myspace or facebook, you pick this up through using the site/service and being involved in the community, this is just a cheat sheet
Customize your profile with your picture http://twitter.com/account/picture and design settings http://twitter.com/account/profile_settings
Email me your username once you are set up and I will pull your feed into our site.
You can also do this yourself – add your twitter updates to another site/s – by setting up a badge (go here http://twitter.com/badges) or sending your twitter feeds directly to your facebook (instructions here http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/twitter-will-update-your-facebook-status-heres-how/) so that you can just update in one place and it sends out the same message across multiple platforms

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Twitter primer