I’m no expert on Twitter, but I’ve had a number of conversations lately with folks who weren’t sure how to use it. Although I know how to use it, I’ve found that it’s not that easy to translate it into layman’s terms. Here’s my first attempt at articulating such things (which I’m expecting will need revisions)…
Basic Guidelines & Terminology
- A “tweet” is a single message on Twitter.
- Each tweet is limited to 140 characters.
- What you see on your Twitter feed (as displayed on your Twitter homepage) is unique to you, showing your tweets and the tweets of the people you follow, in chronological order.
- If you “follow” someone, it does not mean that they are following you, and vice-versa
- Twitter usernames are defined by a prepended @, like @sparrowvisual. This is the proper way to address other Twitter users.
- Twitter is unlike message boards, forums, or Facebook, in that tweets are not linked together to give reference to a conversation.
A Group Conversation Analogy
Imagine being in a room with a group of people all standing in a cirlcle…blindfolded. Everyone in the room has selective hearing, and can only hear the people that they want to listen to. The people you are listening to may or may not be listening to you.
Shotgun Comments
Let’s say your friend Chester announces, “I’m hungry!” A moment later, your other friend Sue (who doesn’t know Chester) says, “my grandmother is in the hospital.” Annoyed at Chester’s constant complaining, you shout out, “quit your whining!”
In this situation, your statement may be wrongly perceived by others listening. Since Sue didn’t hear Chester complain about his hunger, all she heard was you saying “quit your whining” after she said that her grandmother was in the hospital, and now wrongly assumes you were talking to her. It is therefore important to call out a name if you are talking to a specific person. In the case of Twitter, the proper way to talk to someone directly is to enter their username prepended with the @.
Old News
Taking this analogy a little further, let’s say you patched things up with Sue. A few hours later, after a good deal of conversation has passed in the room, you remember back to Sue’s mention of her grandmother. You know that Sue has 2 grandmothers, and you wonder which one is in the hospital. With your new-found etiquette, you appropriately say, “Sue, which one?” Unfortunately, over the last hour, Sue’s comments had shifted from her grandmother to her love life, which spurred this statement made just prior to yours: “I love my husband.”
Sue is again disturbed by your comment, as she assumes you are responding to her latest statement rather than the one you intended. Taking this back to Twitter, if you want to reply to an old tweet, make sure you make that clear in your comment. In this case, the appropriate thing to say would be, “Sue, which of your grandmothers is in the hospital?” And if this was a tweet, and Sue’s username was “sue1234″, the appropriate comment would be: “@sue1234 which of you grandmothers is in the hospital?”
More Harm Than Good?
Hopefully this analogy doesn’t cause more confusion than explaining Twitter in technical terms. Leave a comment with any questions. There’s a lot more to Twitter than this, but hopefully it will help with some basic fundamentals.
