A handy glossary to help decipher the lexicon of Twitter.

Tweet: A short post or update of 140 characters or less, which is published to your Twitter page. Generally they answer the question asked by Twitter; “What are you doing now?” but you can write whatever takes your fancy. Post links, share your opinion or ask questions.

Follow / Followers: To follow someone is to add his or her “tweets” to your real-time news feed. They do not have to follow you in return, but you may find they will. Your followers are all the Twitter users following your tweets.

@ + username: When the @ symbol is placed directly in front of a Twitter username, that username then becomes a red link to the user’s page. @ + username can be divided into two categories: replies and mentions.
@username(reply): By clicking the arrow in the right bottom hand corner of someone’s tweet, you can reply to the tweet they posted. Otherwise, typing @ + username into your tweet box, followed by your message, will direct your message at that user.
EG:
Alyssia: Has anyone stayed at the new Tyrian Apartments in Fitzroy?
Simone: @Alyssia Yep… I have, I really liked it - worth considering for your next melbourne trip!

@username (mention): A mention is simply placing an @ symbol before a username that you are discussing. Either you are talking about them, or wanting to include them in the conversation.

David: Have you checked out the awesome work of surf, fashion and adventure photographer @tedgrambeau
Graeme: As an art director @tedgrambeau is a pedigree photog. His website was designed by @sctmelbourne - you should check their work out too.

NOTE: You can view your @replies and mentions in the right hand side tool bar on your Twitter home page. Click the @’your username’ to view all of them.

Direct Messages (DM): These are like an ‘inbox’ for your Twitter account. They are private messages that the public will not see, as they will not show up on your page. To send a user a direct message, they have to be following you.

# symbol: “Hash tags” are used to group tweets into categories relating to keywords they have tagged with the # symbol. They can also become conversational topics for all users to get involved in, such as ‘#bestfeeling’.  These can become quite popular and often show in the top ten trending topics on Twitter search.
Hashtags also become red links, and clicking on a hashtag will search all other tweets containing the same hashtag.
EG. #iraqelection #haiku  (often hashtagged after users tweet their haiku poems) #favouritesong

Lists: One of the newest features to Twitter, lists are a way to organise your followers into groups. You can group followers according to what they generally ‘tweet’ about, location, co-workers, family, anything you like!

RT: to re-post (called retweeting) something posted by another user - preceed it with “RT” and “@username” to give credit to original poster.

Get tweeting!

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