Hey all.

If your reading this, then you must be wanting to learn about Twitter. Well, first of all, make sure you have signed up at http://www.twitter.com. Pick a cool username, although you can choose a different one in the future. I chose MikeFoden.

Once you pick your username, you will end up with a screen and a box. A box that will let you type 140 characters. If you have used Facebook you will have entered statuses. You can enter messages, links, replies and direct messages to other users, and basically whatever you want into this box. They are called tweets. Post a couple!

But where to go to from there?

The best thing to do is to start following people. By following people, you will see their updates. The more people you follow, the more varied your “timeline” is. The timeline is basically the feed of incoming tweets done by you and the people your following. If you find yourself flooded by one user’s updates, try following more users.

As you start following people and they follow you, you will start seeing a few popular things coming up. I’ll try and explain a few now:

Replies

If you want to send a tweet that gets the attention of a user, you need to place their username behind an @ symbol. Below is an example:

@MikeFoden I can haz cheeseburger?

That message will pop up on my twitter feed as a reply to me. Use this method to send messages to certain users.

Direct Messages

Want to send a message at someone but make it private? Use a direct message. To send a user a direct message, enter a message like so:

d MikeFoden Hey! Just wanted to say hi ;)

The lower-case d followed by a username will trigger it.

Retweets

You may see people retweeting what other people have written. Here is an example of a tweet I retweeted today:

RT @kvaniki: Your a wicked cool person @mikefoden hahahah

Sometimes people will want to share what other people have written. The ettiquette for this is to place a RT (stands for retweet) and then a reply to their username.

# Tags

Hash tags are used to help group posts into topics. A popular hash tag is the #FollowFriday hash tag, used on Fridays by people to show which users they think their followers should use. Trending topics are usually grouped using hash tags.

Fellow twitterers, have a play around with Twitter and try it out. Send me questions, I’ll write a follow up post about Twitter soon asking any questions people give me :)

For now, out!