Twitter – a little better understood
Got this link from a friend.
For anyone who’s still trying to figure out Twitter, this is a nice site that tracks some of the major brands, celebs and media outlets’ tweets. You can see how companies and public figures are using Twitter to share information and start conversations in a timely fashion. It can get rather overwhelming to sort through your friends’ tweets vs. news media tweets vs. government tweets, etc. So if you ever need a quick snapshot of what’s being tweeted in these categories, the site pulls them together in an organized fashion.
It’s interesting to see how Twitter has expanded drastically in the last year, especially with hot topics like the presidential election and now with companies jumping on board. There is still the aspect of friends and family sharing microblog tweets with each other to just keep up with what’s going on in each others’ lives. But with the addition of marketers, celebrities and official organizations jumping into the mix, your Twitter feed soon looks more like headlines in a ticker, except you get to choose the source.
Just so I can share some of the knowledge I picked up this week…
RT = re-tweet. You put this at the start of your tweet, include @whomever’s-tweet-you’re-sharing, and then paste their tweet. This is a way to take something you saw and share it with your own network of followers.
# = tag. When the debacle of the final rose for the Bachelor went down, a lot of the tweets included #bachelor in their commentary. This is a way of tagging. You can see or search for popular tags at search.twitter.com, where it pulls up real-time search results.
If anyone has more tips to share on how to make the most of Twitter or how to decipher all the little codes, please pass them along.
