TRAPPSTR

The TRAPPSTR.com A-Z Twitter Guide!

Posted on 29. Sep, 2009 by Brett in Social Media

It’s Twitter Week at TRAPPSTR.com! 5 days of Twitter madness! Whether you love Twitter or think it’s hot garbage, check back each day for a fresh look at the state of the Twitterverse. If you haven’t signed up for Twitter, DO IT NOW! You can find the TRAPPSTR on Twitter right here. If you like something you see, pass this article along by clicking on the SEND THIS POST TO A FRIEND button at bottom.

Also, I’m having a contest for a free, custom-designed Twitter background! You can learn about that here.

Here is everything you need to know about Twitter from A – Z

A – @ symbol – On Twitter, you can publicly reply to other people’s tweets using the @ symbol. However only those who also follow that person will be able to see your response. When you put the @ symbol in front of someone’s username, it turns their name into a hyperlink that will take you directly to their Twitter profile.

B – Bio – Twitter allows you to write a 160 character bio on your profile.

C – Celebrities – An active celebrity presence has done a lot to fuel Twitter’s explosive growth. You can easily find them on CelebrityTweet.

D – Direct Message - A direct message (also called a DM) is a private message between you and one other Twitter user. Think of this as the email of Twitter, under 140 characters of course.

E – Emergencies - One of the surprising uses of Twitter that has emerged is in times of emergency. I saw this firsthand during Atlanta’s recent floods. People were posting images and flood updates using the #atlflood hashtag. More famously, we saw Twitter’s emergency usefulness in the summer of 2009 when it became a big part of Iran’s controversial elections. The U.S. government even asked Twitter not to do routine maintenance so they could continue to monitor the situation. Twitter to the rescue.

F – Favorite – Twitter allows you to star memorable tweets which stores them in your list of favorites so you can go back and read them anytime.

Followers – On Twitter, you have followers, not friends. Narcissists and egomaniacs love this feature.

G – Goodies – Twitter’s official list of “goodies” can be found here.

H – Hashtag - The hashtag symbol (#) is used to create searchable hyperlinks within Twitter. For example, recently I issued the Hasselhoff Challenge. I used the hashtag #hasselhoffchallenge. That way I can click on that link and quickly see who else is talking about it. For more on hashtags, read this.

I – Images - Twitter is great for quickly posting images from your cell phone. Most Twitter cell phone apps will have a third party client that posts pics (Twitpic, Tweetphoto, etc.)

J – Jack Dorsey – The guy who created Twitter back in 2006. Pretty interesting story.

K – Kutcher – As in Ashton Kutcher. This guy helped put Twitter on the map back in the spring of 2009 when he and CNN had a very public race to see who could be the first to 1 million followers.

L – Links – People love posting links on Twitter. This has set off an avalanche of handy URL shortening services like bit.ly.

M – Microblogging – Know this term. This is what tech geeks call Twitter, Facebook statuses, etc. Toss this word into the conversation next time you want to sound real cool. As in, “Microblogging is red hot right now.” Yep, that’ll get you a date.

N – Ninety % – That was the shocking stat that came out of this Harvard Business article a few months ago. “The top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of all tweets.”

O – One-hundred forty – 140 is the max number of characters you can squeeze into a tweet. Gotta keep it short. That’s the point.

P – Protected Tweets - You can actually set up a Twitter account with “protected tweets.” That means you get to approve or deny who sees your tweets. Assuage your paranoia.

Q – Quotient – As in Twitter Quotient

R – Retweet - Like an email forward but much cooler. When you see a tweet you like, copy and paste it with an RT in front of it. FYI, retweeting without giving attribution = bad form.

Reply – Using the @ symbol (see above), this is how you publicly reply to someone.

S – Search Twitter

T – Timeline – This is the official name for a user’s stream of tweets.

Trending Topics – A list of the top ten most popular “trending” words on Twitter at that exact moment. I wrote about this yesterday.

U – Username – Your username can be 16 characters max. Quick, go get yours before someone else does.

Ubertwitter – My preferred cell phone Twitter app (only for Blackberry). I’m a HUGE fan.

V – Volume – As in TweetVolume, a cool site for seeing how often words/phrases show up on Twitter.

W – Wow! - As in, “Wow, I can’t believe Twitter is really worth $1 billion!” If Twitter is a billion dollar idea, there is hope for all of us!

X – eX - As in ex-Twitter user. Twitter has a lot of em. 60% of Twitter users quit within the first month. Not sure why that is. I think that is changing.

Y – YouTwit – A sweet site that plots your tweets on a map.

Z – Zero – As in, “You have a zero percent chance of winning the TRAPPSTR.com Twitter Week Contest if you don’t retweet this post ASAP!”