Category Archives: Twitter Tips

Twitter Welcome Wagon: Generic User Edition

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Welcome to Twitter! It's about time you got here.

This primer has some tips and resources you'll need to get oriented. There are trillions of tutorials available on Twitter, many of them pretty poor. Twitter's own help pages are among the worst of them.  But there are some adequate sites and pages, ranging from this brief overview style, to the far more extensive, tutorial-about-everything style, such as Mashable's Guide To Twitter.  Even the bad ones can still give you the basics.

Note: Twitter 101 For Business is probably better than most of their materials, and worth a look, even if you're not a business.

I suggest you glance at that one, but ignore the rest (for now). Just wander around, asking questions and endearing yourself to people by being clueless and vulnerable.  Just bear these things in mind during your first week:

  • Tip 1: As in most of life, most people don't know what they're talking about. Twitter has a LOT of those people, and many of them are probably advising you right now. Just send them away. Tell them, "go, I'll learn by stumble."
  • Tip 2: If you're a celebrity, like Tiger Woods's penis, I suggest you ignore the volume of people tweeting at you for a  few weeks. Relax and spend time with a handful of friends and co-workers, and learn how to follow people and "feeds" at your leisure. It's easier than you think.  Select one or two really skilled people and listen to them. This keeps you from being overwhelmed by too many tutors.  But don't assume their habits are everyone's habits, and never assume they understand even 1% of what Twitter is about. They don't. And you won't either, for a long time—if ever. Use your desktop and a program like Tweetdeck.  Don't try to absorb all the culture and tricks on a tiny mobile interface. Spread out.
  • Tip 3: If you're a liberal minded person, politically, the Progressive community is your friend here. You'll find many of us on the #p2 tag. You can read about what the #p2 tag is here.  Whenever you see it, a progressive is tweeting out to the progressive community, or some wingnut is spamming the tag and probably calling you a socialist fag. If you're unlucky, these same conservative hatriots can often be seen using their own "#tcot" tag (and others like it).  These "#hashtag" codes are just little identifiers for what people are talking about. It's very informal and primitive, but it works. Clicking on tags will show you the "conversations" (the tweets) happening at those tags.

     

    Try it. Click #p2 for filthy commie libs, or #tcot for screaming Beck fans who want all liberals to be sent to Super Max concentration camps.

    If you're a conservative minded person, my only tip is this: Facebook.

  • Tip 4: Follow people you can trust to follow people worth following.  But don't stick to your bubble pals (the friend of friends who probably dragged you to Twitter). Pick people you know are interested in diverse issues and ideas. They come upon the most interesting things to know of at any given time. Beware of your own natural tendency to cluster and nest with only people you know.Twitter is about discovery of people and ideas. The best of those are often outside our comfort zones.
  • Tip 5:  Don't be a dork. Especially if you're famous. if someone passes you a tip, or a resource, or an idea, at least tweet a simple thank you.  You don't have to know everyone's name, or that their grandma's dog just died.  But try and explore the very personal exchanges and relationships you can have and enjoy here. You just don't know it yet.
  • Tip 6: Just ask your feed how to do things. Example:  "@shoq, what the hell is "new retweet;" "What's a hat tip?" "How do I start juicy rumors about @pressSec and @kimKardashian?"

That's it. You'll pick it all up from here.

Most of all. Enjoy it. Yes, it's a brave new world, but it's also an interesting and fun one.

Clients You'll Want

Client programs take social media to a new level not usually found on the web verisons of many applications  Nobody you like uses the Twitter.com website to access Twitter:

  • Tweetdeck (makes Twitter MUCH easier). . Tweetdeck is  where you want to be, to start. There are many other programs, but they all work similarly.
  • Hootsuite —  gets better all the time. Tweetdeck is still what I use, as I find it closest to the user experience that I think should be the bare minimum in today's social media ecosystem.

Resources You'll Want

Verify Your Twitter Account — Very important. Celebrities and people important to Twitter can get it done. Just ask your staff to follow instructions.  We little people have to suck it.

Basic Twitter Terms You Must Know

What is Twitter "Blocking"

How to get started with-twitter — As stated above, just one of many tutorials. One is just about as good as another at the start. Get the key ideas; learn by doing.

Twitter Help

Top 50 Twitter Acronyms, Abbreviations and Initialisms by @digiphile — A very good guide by a saavy social media thought leader.

Shoq's Tips — A number of things you won't find easily. Including tricky issues like New Retweet vs. Old Retweet, etc.

What does #FF or "#Follow Friday" mean?  — Since Friday is your first full day, you're about to find out.  It's not one of Twitter's finer traditions. Read about it here.

Twictionary.com — All the lingo in one place. Not for the squeamish.

Hashtags.org — A dictionary of tags (best picked up by just watching and asking)

Journalists on Twitter — A decent, if not exhaustive directory of people you will surely be interested in. Remember, there's far more insight and ideas than what come across in any one community.

Directory of Twitter Lists — Lists are a great way to follow the tweets of many people in various interest areas, without actually following individuals.  You just follow the list, and browse the tweets of the people in them.  

WeFollow.com —A General Twitter Directory

Tweetprogress.us — The Progressive Community on Twitter. Hardly definitive, but most of the leaders and core people are there.

About Gametags — Which are an amusing way to waste hours of time creating completely silly, often riotously funny, poignant, or humiliating tweets about breaking news, or really dumb or annoying people and events.

How To Verify A Tweet  — Useful for Journalists, or anyone trying to confirm the veracity of a Tweet on a fact or news story.

Note: This page will change often. If you are referring it to friends, please ask them to check back often. If you feel it needs new concepts or resources, please post a comment.

As always, using the Retweet button below will expose this page others.

What are #Gametags

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Overview

Gametag — is a term that I created to describe the use of #hashtaqs in contests or simple word games played on Twitter, and other social networks that support such tags.

Sometimes I, my friend @lizzWinstead, or some other Twitter addict will create a tag and put it out there and see if others will find it amusing and join in by tweeting some quip, definition, remark, or other form of "submission" to the #gametag stream.

Most often, these are just for fun, and tossed out at random, but there are many people who are addicted to creating them in hopes that they will become a "Trending Topic" (#TT), and get listed in Twitter's search interface.  Some try to make this happen to promote an event or product (but these are usually obvious, rarely much fun, and often fail to gain much traction).

A popular gametag can be followed—or at least noticed—by thousands, even millions of people on social networks.

Many gametags are based on a breaking news event, such #balloonBoy or #StupaksNewJob, but the majority of them are predicated on some amusing premise such as #TeabaggerMovieTitles, #3wordsAfterSex, or #4WordStories.

For example, #TeachOlbermann was a new gametag I created to teach new Tweep, Keith Olbermann what people think he should know about Twitter—or the politics, culture, allure, or hazards thereof. About 1% of them were serious, and the rest merely funny—or trying hard to be.

Note: You never know with tags. Sometimes they soar, and become a "trending tag," and at other times they're just dog tags and die a quick death).

Some Recent Gametags

Note:  These may be removed from Twitter by the time you read this.

Related

My Common Hash Tags, Codes and Terms

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I have created or promoted several tags and codes that are in everyday use on Twitter. And I use many of them, often. Logically enough, one result of that is that I often get asked what some code or tag means. So I've listed the common ones below to save me some time and keystrokes in the future.

If I've left out anything that youv'e seen me use often, please let me know.  I'm not going to make this a glossary of all codes in use. Only the ones which I personally use. I will list some general tag glossaries at the bottom of this post.

Signal Codes

VIA  – Has been used like RT in some older Twitter clients, but I personally dislike it. It's very ambiguous to start with, and the different takes on its meaning make it worse. I prefer it to mean (as do many) that "I came upon this resource via (by way of): @name."  While  @name can often be an individual when appropriate, it is most often a publication name, be it newspaper, blog, TV show, or some other venue. Via should refer to the primary publication conveying the content, and not necessarily the content's author (although they can be one and the same.). 

Example: "This title here" by @pinhead666 was via @oprahshow." 
 

HT  (or h/t, or simply ^@name)  Stands for "Hat Tip," an acknowledgement to the person who brought the item to my attention. While HT is the most common variant, I've now switched to the programmer's "hat" (^) symbol. It saves two characters (including the space after HT), and that is not an insignificant savings in Twitterville's 140 character space.

Example: "This title here" by @pinhead666 was via @oprahshow. ^@dingleberry

FTW – "For The Win."

Codes Created By Me

I've also conceived or embraced a few codes that everyone would use, were I ever King.  Some of my followers and friends use them now. These can be typed upper or lower case, but the preferred case is indicated.

MT — Modified Tweet/Transmission. The tweet was substantially changed to mock or clarify.

CC — Carbon Copy routing to list of people.  Do not retweet (or the recipients get tweet-bombed).

by — precedes person or organization that authored the work being tweeted. Best when referring to single, not multiple creators. See next.

cr— Creator code. Essentially a more multipurpose version of "BY @someone" when more than one author or producer created the work.  Based on Dublin Core meta data standards. Signifies that @name mentioned before the CR code had some kind of creative authorship or moderating role in relation to the Tweet or resource.  The precise role is beyond the scope of the code, and a level of detail that cannot be conveyed in a tweet. This code at least affirms there is such a role relationship to be further discovered. 

Code Glossaries

Hashtags

#p2 — The "clear channel" umbrella tag for Progressives (you may know them as "Liberals") to connect up and share resources and information across Twitter and other social networks. Read its history and mission here: About the #p2 Tag For Progressives.

#tcot  — Top Conservatives on Twitter.  In reality, it's mostly unhinged teaparty whack jobs, but it's entertaining for some when there's nothing on TV. I usually include this tag in a tweet when I believe the content is of interest to the conservatives wrecking America, or is simply so deliciously mocking that they shouldn't be left out of the mirth.

#tlot — Top Libertarians on Twitter. People who wanted to maintain some distance from the whackjobs in #tcot (see previous), but ended up with their own homegrown variation of the tag. After all, as Drew Carey said, "A libertarian is just a conservative who still gets high."

#ocra — Organized Christian Resistance Alliance. A fringe conservative group who should be watched closely before they bite the heads off too many squirrels.

#WTL – Wingnut Threat Level.  A color-coded system for indicating the current alert status of the biggest threat to democracy since Rush Limbaugh. I created this tag because someone had to.

Hash Tags Created By Me

#ff — Alias for "#FollowFriday," but also being repurposed to mean: "Friends to follow."   It basically means, "I am recommending these [ @names in this tweet ] to my followers.

I did not create #followFriday. I did spend years almost bodily forcing people to shorten it to the much more sensible and economic form now known as "#FF."  Read more about that history, and my redefinition of it here.

#Hatriot — Means "this tweet concerns a Foxbagger, Limbaugh/Beck listener,  or some other strain of right wingnut.  Those who know me, know I've been using this term since 1996, on various services. I neglected to add it to Urban Dictionary (only started doing that with my terms recently), and only recently did someone else finally get around to doing that. And that's fine. I just love the term. Credit is for those kids on the FreeCreditReport.com ads.

Hashtag Directories

  • Hashtags.org — A dictionary of tags (which are best picked up by just watching and asking).

Words and Terms Coined by Me

My Urban Dictionary Contributions

Twictionary.com  —which I administrate, had all sorts of Twerms I've created, defined, or just use a lot.