If you’re just starting out on Twitter, figuring out how it works may be challenging at first. Here’s a Tweet broken down to help you understand what it all means.
Knowing the basic terms and with some practice, you’ll be on your way to joining the twitosphere!
Twitter basic terms you should know:
Follower: A follower is another Twitter user who has followed you.
DM: Also called “Direct Message”, are Tweets that are private between the sender and recipient.
@replies : Use the (@)sign in front of a Twitter username to reply to someone, to refer to them, or direct a new message to somebody.
Retweeting (RT): Retweeting is the act of sharing someone else’s tweet.
Hashtag: Use the number (#) symbol before relevant keywords in your Tweets to categorize your information and facilitate search.
#followfriday or #FF: On Fridays, people recommend users that they want to highlight or that others should follow by including their username and #followfriday or #FF in a tweet
The Fail Whale: The fail whale is an image which shows that Twitter has been overloaded or that a failure occurred within the service.
Tweet Chat: A pre-arranged chat that happens on Twitter which includes a predefined hashtag to link those tweets together in a virtual conversation. Find out some Tweet Chat schedules here.
URL: A web address that points to a unique page on the internet.
URL shortener: Are used to turn long URLs into shorter URLs.
Geolocation: The use of location data in Tweets to say where you are in real time.
Handle: A user’s “Twitter handle” is the username they have selected. Example, my Twitter handle is @vasimpleservice.
Promoted Tweets: Tweets that selected businesses have paid to promote at the top of search results on Twitter.
Trending Topic: A subject algorithmically determined to be one of the most popular on Twitter at the moment.
