Twitter is one among the latest social networking phenomenon that has taken the whole world by storm. The concept of twitter differs from Facebook and other social networking websites in that it presents a form of sharing your thoughts and updates in real time. The twitter concept has caught on in a big way and we present to you an easy to use guide for getting started on twitter.
Getting an account
Getting a twitter account is very easy. All you need to do is to visit http://www.twitter.com and click on the sign up link that you see there. The account creation process is pretty simple and requires very few basic details. Choose your username carefully as that will appear as your display name for twitter. Check out the terms of service and click on the submit button. The account is created and ready for use.
Tweeting your way forward
As you would have probably noticed by now, tweets are what drive twitter. Hence, you need to learn how to make a tweet and what tweets are in the first place.
A tweet is nothing but a short post which describes your current activity or your thought process or just about anything that you wish to share with the world. The tweets will be visible on your friend’s home page or on your own home page if someone visits your twitter home. Since it is basically a social networking concept, the chances of your tweets getting read are more if you have a larger social network of friends who actively use twitter.
Making a tweet
Making a tweet is a very simple task. Just logon to your twitter account, and make a post in the box provided at the top of your twitter home and click on share. Your post or tweet as it is called is instantly posted and visible on the home pages or timelines as they are called of all your buddies.
Socializing on twitter
In the previous section, we mentioned about how your tweets will show up in your friend’s timeline. But for that to happen, they need to be on your network first! To do that, they need to click on the follow link in your profile. The same way, by clicking on the follow link in their profile, you can keep track of all the tweets they make from your home page itself. This is called as following someone.
To un-follow a person, all you need to do is to click on the respective link in their home page. All future timelines of that particular person will be removed from your home page.
Replying to a tweet
Responding to a tweet is also pretty simple. From your home page, choose the tweet you want to respond to. Then hover over it and click on the reply button that appears below the tweet. A text box will pop up with a @symbol followed by the other person’s username. You can append your reply to that and click on update to make the tweet. The @user-name can be directly used if you want to refer a particular tweet to someone.
Keeping track of your replies
To see who have replied to your tweets, click on the @your-user-name from the twitter sidebar to show all your buddies who have posted some reply to your tweet or sent you a tweet.
Re-tweeting
Other than the reply button below a tweet, you will also see a re-tweet button. Clicking that will allow you to transmit someone’s tweet as your own while referring to that person as well. This helps when a message needs to be passed across to a large cross section of twitter followers across the globe.