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Twitter, it’s one of the most popular micro-blogging sites in the world with over 200 million users out there ‘tweeting’, the so called ‘SMS’ of the Internet can be slightly confusing for new comers.

Here are some helpful terms so you can start tweeting and chirp up a storm

What is a Username?

Your username is something you can create to allow your friends, or colleagues to follow you, and read your tweets as you post them.

Using the ‘@’ symbol followed by your username will allow your followers to ‘reply’ or ‘mention’ you in one of their tweets.

You are informed of the mention on twitter via email, or notification from a mobile application, enabling you to read and/or reply to your follower.

Security on Twitter

The all-important feature. In this type of society, we are all after a way of protecting ourselves from those who intend to do us wrong.

Every profile is defaulted to Public, so if one is wishing to protect themselves, have a look at your settings during set up of your account, and you’ll find the magic button of ‘Protect you Tweets’. This tick box, once saved, will allow only your followers to view your tweets, protecting them from those prying eyes.

Using Hashtags on Twitter

Hashtags are a ‘#’ symbol prefixing words or phrases with multiple words concatenated, to create a ‘searchable’ term.

i.e:  @Vodafone_AU #VFPerks

This allows you to join in a mass conversation on a certain topic or voice a thought or opinion, which has become a ‘Trend’.

Trending

Trends are the most common phrases that have appeared in messages, or #Hashtags that Twitter users have tweeted.

They become ‘Trends’, which appear in a sidebar, which indicates what is the most popular in your part of the world.

Verified Badges

These badges let you escape the confusion of which celebrity twitter page is the real one.

A Blue badge is shown next to the Username of the celebrity to verify that it is the official page of that person.  

So make sure that ‘Robert Pattinson’ you have been searching for has that little blue tick of approval!

Photo-Sharing

When Twitter first came to our shores, the only way to share photos to your followers was through third-party services that provided you with the photo uploading capabilities, through sites like Twitpic/yfrog/Lockerz.

From June 1st, 2011, Twitter has allowed users share photos right from Twitter.com.

In addition, Twitter also providing photo galleries designed to gather and syndicate all photos you have uploaded to your twitter account through any of the third-party sites.

So, you think you’re up to tweeting those lovely thoughts of yours? Join thousands of us, online, and join the Twitter revolution.

I’ll see you all there, little birdies.

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