Twitter seems to be everywhere you look these days. From your favorite website to your neighborhood bakery. It seems as though everyone is tweeting. And what does tweeting mean anyway???
It is not uncommon to feel lost amongst the terminology and ever changing social media landscape.
Here are some basic terms to get you started…
- “Tweet” – A twitter posting, less than 140 characters.
- “ReTweet” – Reposting what another user has already tweeted.
- “Follower” – A user who is reading your tweets.
- “Follow” – To receive another user’s tweet stream.
- “Tweeps” – Twitter friends and followers that you are constantly in communication with.
- “Twittosphere” – All people who tweet as a collective group.
- “Avatar” – The image used to represent your account and persona.
- “Buttons” or “Goodies” – Use these tools to put links to your Twitter account from your website, blog, e-mail and other websites.
- “Follow Count” – The number of people that follow you and that you follow. Your Twitter “network” size.
- “Handle” – aka “username“. The unique name you have chosen to represent you on Twitter.
- “Follow Friday” – #followfriday is a game in which people suggest who to follow on Twitter. It helps everyone find interesting Twitter users.
- “Hashtags” – aka “#“. The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. People use the hashtag symbol # before relevant keywords (no spaces) in their Tweet to categorize those Tweets and help them show more easily in Twitter Search. Clicking on a hashtagged word in any message shows you all other Tweets in that category.
We hope this helps, good luck and have fun on your Twitter journey!
