Twitter Basic Info

I've realized recently, from a new friend, that what regular Twitter users know is not common knowledge. Here are a few basic how-to's for those of you that are just getting started and need to know how to have conversations-private and public. This information is for those that are using the Twitter web interface, and not a third party application.

If you go to www.HeartlandCrossingCommunity.com and check my blog post about Twitter, that should also give you some great insight.

Blog post:
http://heartlandcrossing.ning.com/profiles/blogs/twitterare-you-tweeting

To reply to a Tweet, if you hover in the lower right hand corner of the Tweet you are wanting to reply to, there is a small arrow that appears. This puts @ and the persons name in the reply box, you type your message hit send, and it goes to their @replies box. To see people that have replied to you, click on @replies on the right side of your page, and voila! there they are!

For direct messaging (DM), which are private, that person has to be following you. You can DM a couple of ways:

1- Go to that persons profile and on the right side you will see a link that says "message". Click that and type the message, and they will only see it. It will be in their Direct Message tab. 2- Another way is to click the Direct Messages tab on your profile, and select a name from your list of friends, select the person you want to DM, type your 140 characters, and hit send!

When you Tweet either an @ reply or a general message, the entire Twitter network can see it. That is one of the awesome things about Twitter! It's a great PR tool. If you want to have a private conversation just make sure it's in the form of a direct message!

You can also use your phone to text message Tweets. From your profile, click the Settings link.
From there, click the Devices tab. Enter the information, and your
phone is now set up to send and receive messages! You will get a text from Twitter confirming your phone number. Be sure to save that number in your phone as "Twitter" so that you don't forget the number and can Tweet when you are away from your computer!

A tool that I use A LOT is the Shareaholic FireFox add-on.
If you download this add-on, you'll be able to share links without having to visit Twitter, you don't have to worry about shortening the links with Tinyurl or Tiny.cc, it does it for you! It is a must for those of you that enjoy social bookmarking or link sharing via Twitter.

Hope this helped!