Twitter: The Must-Know Conventions, Tricks, and More

So you probably recently joined Twitter after your friends pressured told you about how great it is. But now that you’ve joined Twitter and sent your first few tweets, now what?

Basics

Twitter isn’t all about just tweeting or following.

• Find out what people are saying about you! On Twitter’s homepage, select the @yourusername tab. This tab collects all mentions of your username.
• Direct message. Is your friend following you? Are you following them? Great! Direct message allows you to send messages to them. It’s faster, quicker, and more awesome than email.
• Favorites. Mouse over any tweet and click on the star to mark it as your favorite. Access all your favorites by clicking on the favorites tab on Twitter’s homepage.
• Search! Find out what’s going on in the world. Twitter displays 10 trending topics and also lets you enter queries to search the Twitterverse in real-time.

Get a client

Tweetie for Mac

Power users of Twitter never use the web interface. Desktop applications allow you to manage multiple accounts or have added features. Personally, I use the app Tweetie, which is exclusive to the Mac platform, but of course there is a plethora of other choices. Adobe AIR applications like Twhirl or Seesmic Desktop. You can find more apps at Twitter downloads, or even more at the Tweetie fan wiki.

And don’t forget to get a good client for your phone. For iPhone and iPod touch, TweetDeck is a great choice.

The Conventions

Want to sound unintelligible to the newbies who just joined Twitter? Easy! Use some Twitter conventions. We have them all listed right here.

• The @ Symbol: Used to refer to another user on Twitter. For example, you might say: “@SupahAsian and I just argued over something.” When put at the very front of a tweet, it is known as a reply. UPDATE: You should click the arrow next to the tweet to reply to another person. This lets Twitter know which tweet you are replying to, letting you see the full conversation thread if you want to. (Thanks, Kevin!)
• RT: RT stands for retweet. It is used to restate, word-for-word, what another Twitter user said. For example: “RT @Grant_Lin: Wow- I just found out that I like to type things in this box and erase and just type some other random thing in after…repeatedly.”
• OH: OH stands for overheard. Use it when you overhear something that you want to tweet. For example: “OH: I told her let’s watch Dora, but this time, I’ll be the explorer.”
• #: The number sign is known as a hashtag. Use it to refer to a topic. For example: “Apple just announced new MacBook Pros! Cool! #wwdc”
• via: Similar to RT, but used when you edit what another user said. For example: “I think they’re equally illegal. (via @Grant_Lin)

Just a tip: Gracious Twitter users don’t use up all 140 characters when tweeting. This is to leave room for others to RT.

Short URLs

Because the maximum number of characters per tweet is only 140, sharing links can be a pain. Luckily, services like bit.ly or tr.im turn super long URLs into tidy short ones. Both services allow you to quickly post stuff to Twitter once you’ve shortened a link, track statistics, and more. Most desktop clients shorten URLs for you.

Share Pics

How do you share pictures on Twitter? Easy: Twitpic. Twitpic is a service that allows you to quickly take or upload a photo and share it on Twitter. Most desktop clients already integrate support for Twitpic. You could also use it on your phone.

Feed your blog

A great way to advertise your blog is to feed it into your Twitter stream. Use Twitterfeed to make sure that all your blog posts also get put automatically in your Twitter stream.

That’s that for our quick Twitter Must-Know Guide. Feel free to tell us about your own favorite Twitter tricks by emailing us at theworld@daylenyang.com. And be sure to follow @daylenyang (that’s me!) on Twitter!