Getting Started with Twitter 9.3.09
Fast Facts What’s all the fuss about?
• Launched in October of 2006
• Gained large following after South Some aspects of social media can seem a little intimidating. It’s a lot like the first
By Southwest interactive
conference of 2007 day of high school; everything’s new, there are kids in the hallway using words
• Written in Ruby on Rails you’ve never heard before, and you’re just not quite sure who to talk to or where
• Free to use
• Tweets can be up to 140 characters to go. Don’t worry! You’re not alone, and luckily it’s pretty easy to get ramped up.
• Posting tweets from a cell phone is
free, except for the phone provider First Things First-What’s Twitter and why should I care?
charge for the text message
• 29 employees (as of February Twitter isn’t just a cute way for keeping in instant touch with friends
2009)Twitter Blog: Opportunity
on mobile phones anymore. For some, it has ramped up quickly as
Knocks (February 13, 2009)2
• Japanese version launched in April their search engine of choice with its human driven results/filtering.
of 2008
For others it’s been a lifeline during times of crisis (i.e., Iran
• Estimated 1.9 million unique visitors
in December 2008TechCrunch: Did elections, Mumbai hotel attack)
Twitter Just Pass Digg? (January
20, 2009)3
• Number of active users grew 900% Applications galore allow you to find friends all over the world with
between early 2008 and early
2009Twitter Blog: Opportunity similar interests and keep up with them in real time.
Knocks (February 13, 2009)2
• Received funding from: Benchmark
Capital, Institutional Venture Businesses can form instant direct relationships with their customer
Partners, Bezos Expeditions and bases simply by signing up and using the service regularly, and
Spark CapitalTwitter Blog:
Opportunity Knocks (February 13, according to the models Twitter is trying out, they will soon be able to
2009)2 Twitter Blog: Welcoming
Bijan and Jeff (June 24, 2008)4
advertise to the Twitter community as well. It has grown into a
behemoth that is hard to get your hands around right off the bat.
Twitter 101-The Basics
1. Go to Twitter.com and click “Sign up now”
2. Fill out the information and you’re ready to dive in
3. Choose a name that is easy to read and memorable. You may also want
to consider the shortest possible version of your name because as you
gather a following people will want to pass on your little nuggets of
insight in the form of a ReTweet (RT), which will include your name.
(You can set up multiple accounts just be aware that you must use a different
email account for each username)
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So you have a new Twitter account…now what?
1. Decorate your new home. You can customize your page with their free
backgrounds or you can create your own.
2. Make your mark. Add a photo to distinguish you. This may seem menial
but it’s actually the way most people will recognize your Tweets. Do this
by clicking on the Settings link at the top of the page and then the
“Picture” tab.
3. Start building your network. Find people you know who are already on
Twitter and let them know you’ve arrived! At the top of the page click on
“Find people”. Twitter will allow you to import e-mail lists, contacts from
instant messaging services, and you can find your friends on their search
engine.
4. Seek & ye shall find. The best way to build a list of interesting people is
to go to the Twitter search engine at search.twitter.com and plug in your
interests. This will then spit tons of people back out at you that you can
choose to follow. Twitter will also give you some suggestions for people
to follow.
Tweet Speak
This is usually the most intimidating part about Twitter…the lingo. People LOVE
to integrate all forms of the word Twitter into new words or actions specific to the
site. Like everything else, some people take it too far. (Twitterverse,
Twittershpere, Tweeple, Twopic, Twitterati etc., etc., etc.) A fun list of Twitter
words (Twords) is available for you to enjoy via the wonderful blog Mashable
For example:
A Tweet is simply a 140-character post. Tweets are the building blocks of
Twitter.
Followers are people you choose to keep track of; it’s like adding a friend on
Facebook. Many people try to collect as many followers as possible but if you
want to have an impact it’s about quality not quantity. Remember, this is a tool
(or twool :) people use to communicate.
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If you want to send a Tweet (a message) to a particular person just add “@” to
the beginning of their username within your Tweet (e.g., @cmortensen,
@manifestdigital, etc)
You can also send private messages to people (or Tweeple) on Twitter by adding
“D” before the username. The only stipulation here is that you both have to be
following each other. This helps ward off spammers.
One of the other great things about Twitter is that you can follow conversations
on particular topics by using Hashtags (#). Hashtags are a sort of short hand
best explained with an example. If you are watching a webcast, say from Inbound
Marketing University and you want to know what everyone else thinks about the
class simply search using the hashtag #IMU. The (#) symbol always precedes
the phrase, which can be either short or long. Some common ones are
#followfriday, #nightshift, #fb, #job, #quote, #fail
To see the most popular hashtags look at http://hashtags.org/
Twitter Tools
The most interesting thing I find about Twitter is that most Tweets don’t come
from Twitter at all; they come from third-party applications (aka-clients). There’s a
ton to choose from and each one has its perks. I did a short review of some here:
http://mortmort.com/2009/06/11/review-a-look-at-twitter-clients/ If you have a
favorite that’s not reviewed please let me know because I’d like to post an update
to this list at some point.
http://twittercounter.com/
http://tweetstats.com/
http://twitter.grader.com/
http://twinfluence.com
http://tweetcloud.com/
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