Twitter is made up of twitterers who tweet.
What they tweet are called tweets.
A tweet is a message made up of no more than 140 characters.
All the tweets a twitterer sends out are together called a twitter feed.
Other twitterers can subscribe to this feed.
(Unless the feed is protected, in which case they must first seek permission.)
Subscribing to a feed is called following.
A twitterer follows other twitterers.
Those twitterers who follow him/her are called followers.
If someone likes a tweet they read enough, they can send it on to their followers.
This is called retweeting.
You can tell if something is retweeted because it has RT somewhere in the message, followed by an @ sign, and then the person’s name (RT @loosewire).
Twitterers can also send messages to other twitterers.
This is done with an @ sign, and then the person’s name (@loosewire).
This is a public message. It is visible to everyone.
Another way to communicate with someone is via direct message.
These messages are visible only to the sender and the recipient.
The format for these messages are to put D or DM and a space before the person’s twitter name (D loosewire).
These messages will not be delivered if the recipient is not following the sender. (This is to avoid stalking and preserve some degree of privacy.)
Twitterers mostly get their information by following other twitterers.
But there are other ways.
One is to search for words: names, products, countries, issues.
This can be done via the twitter page.
Another is to search for hashtags.
A hashtag is a one word subject, prefaced by the hash sign (#iranelection).
These hashtags have emerged organically from usage.
Individual hashtags also appear organically from users.
Some hashtags catch on. Some don’t.
That’s pretty much all you need to know.
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