What You Need to Know About Twitter
Social Networking
Twitter is quickly becoming a very big and very powerful social networking website as more and more users start to embrace it. Massive in the U.S., Twitter is yet to fully take hold of Australian’s however according to recent stats this will quickly change. Sandra Hanchard a Hitwise analyst recently blogged how Twitter achieved a record usage in Australia for the week ending on January 10th.
Now even though I am sure most of you reading this post have heard of Twitter before, for many people there is still much mystery about it and exactly how it works. Put simply, Twitter is a social networking service that allows users to post updates, and receive other users updates by entering a text based post of no more then 140 characters, if you are on facebook It is very similar to updating your facebook status. You can follow users on twitter, and other users can follow you, you only see updates from users you are following, and vice versa.
Even though it seems really simple, there is a little more to it which I will try and explain here.
1. Updates
These are your standard updates. You log into twitter and write an update which everyone following you will see in their main timeline. When someone you are following writes an update you will see it in your main timeline.
2. Replies
If you start a update with an @ character followed by a users name, and then your message, this is called a reply. Its like talking to a group of people however addressing a certain person in that group. When you reply to someone, that user will see it in their main timeline, if they are following you. They will see it under their reply tab regardless of if they are following you or not.
3. Direct Messages
If you start a update with a d and then the users name, this is a direct message, and is similar to whispering – only that user will hear you. This will only work if that user is following you.
4. Links
There are times when you may want to post a URL in your update, however considering you only have 140 characters to work with, you may be able to see how this could become a issue, as many URL’s are more then 140 characters by themselves. To fix this Twitter uses a service called TinyURL which automatically shortens URL’s when you enter them, so if you see a URL like http://tinyurl.com/bcajs4 you will now understand what it is.
I hope this post has helped clarify a few things. Ziller has a Twitter profile and if you are on Twitter do check us out. We will be updating with most of our blog posts and latest Ziller news.
Tags: twitter
