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Right, as promised this morning:
The BANG BANG ‘Guide to twitter’!
Right, here’s what you need to know to get going. Firstly, get yourself to www.twitter.com and register an account. Choose a username for yourself. Your name is fine. As is yourname_surname. As is your nickname, or anything else under the sun. Don’t swear, though. And sometimes putting a word related to what you do into your username helps as well. I’ve got RobForbesDJ in mine, so that you know I’m a DJ. If yours is Nick_in_space, or Joe_Rugby, or Jan_Braai, I know what you’re about. Also, keeping your username short is better. It takes up part of your 140 chars, so @JanFrederickJanseVanRensburg will leave you 3 chars and every tweet of yours will have to be a smiley. Not good.
Right, now that you’re registered, let me explain what happens:
Every message you post, or that you read, is called a tweet.
People who follow your account, (called your FOLLOWERS), will see your tweets as you put them up.
People who’s accounts you follow, (called FOLLOWING), you will see their tweets as they put them up.
It’s not like Facebook in that you don’t need permission to follow anyone. No ‘friend request’ rubbish. If their tweets look interesting, hit follow, see what they have to say. If you don’t like ‘em later, just unfollow. Easy.
Ok, on to the seemingly insurmountable code that twitter messages contain.
“ @JoeBloggs RT @RobForbesDJ Hey, check this out! http://bit.ly/61gway5 #cricketworldcup ”
Twitter uses a few basic elements. The @ sign is the one you’ll see anywhere. This is used to show a person’s username. So any message that uses @RobForbesDJ means it’s addressed to or comes from me.
RT is the abbreviation for re-tweet. Basically it means that the message that follows is from someone else, and the person you’ve got it from is simply forwarding it on. So in the example above, the user called Joe Bloggs is forwarding on my message.
#something is called a hashtag. All it is is tagging a key phrase in a tweet. Anyone can use a hashtag, or create a new one at any time, simply by including a # before a word. When you click on a hashtag, all messages in the world that use that hashtag will come up, as per a search. It’s a great way to keep track of a certain event or topic. So, for example, if you’re looking for tweets containing news about the Proteas at the cricket world cup, the hashtag #pureprotea is what’s currently being used. So if you use #pureprotea in a message, such as ‘I really think we’re gonna kick New Zealand’s ass! #pureprotea’, that means that everyone who’s watching the #pureprotea hashtag will also see your message. Imagine how useful this is for #japanquake, or #saelections, or any of a million things happening in your world.
Links to websites on twitter are generally shortened, using any number of url shortening services such as http://bit.ly – this is to save character space in your tweet. News organizations, blogs, writers, etc, often include links to a full article which then get’s posted on twitter.
So, to go back to this example:
“ @JoeBloggs RT @RobForbesDJ Hey, check this out! http://bit.ly/61gway5 #cricketworldcup ”
Joe Bloggs has forwarded a message that I wrote in which I suggest you click on that link to view something about the cricket world cup.
Easy, huh? You’ll get the hang of it.
So now, on to the bit you’re probably waiting for:
Rob’s Recommended List of People to Follow To Get You Started On Twitter:
Tuks FM 1072:
@TuksFM1072
@RobForbesDJ
@pjvanrooyen
@CarmenDuPlessis
Local news:
@news24
@eyewitnessnews
@ewnreporter
@EWNTraffic
@timeslivenews
@mailandguardian
@The_New_Age
International News:
@AJEnglish – Al Jazeera English news
@skynews
@cnnbrk
SA Sports people:
@SuperSportCom
@SuperSportRugby
@hazecricket
@GraemeSmith49
@jpduminy21
@faf1307
@Rolandschoeman
@VictorMatfield
@mornemorkel65
@DaleSteyn62
@BryanHabana
@ABdeVillers17
@JohnSmit123
@No1Beast
General Interest:
@cosmopolitansa
@CARmagSA
@MensHealthZA
etc.
And then, do a twitter search for all your favourite magazines, blogs, tv shows, celebs, journalists, columnists, bands, musicians, etc etc. The list is endless. Huis Genoot have a twitter account. Newsweek do. Playboy do. Barack Obama does. And he updates it himself.
Remember, the more people you follow, the more will follow you back. Be interesting, engage others in conversation as if you know them, and you’ll quickly work out who’s worth keeping tabs on and who isn’t. I hope a bit of this helps.
Good luck and #havefun. See what I did there?
-Rob
