The post(s) in which I explain Twitter to Lorie (and you)

I’ve talked about Twitter several times before.

Some of you don’t use it, and won’t. Others of you do and have gotten the hang of it quite well.

You folks can all skip over this today and go on to the next blog – this is for Lorie and anyone else who asks, “How do I reply to someone on Twitter?” She asked that in a phone text to my wife, coffeesister, and we both looked at each other with deep concern. Maybe a little too deep for Twitter but doggone it, Lorie needs help and she’s going to get it!

I’ve known Lorie for about 20 years. She knew coffeesister first, and she was in our wedding party when we got married. She sings gospel songs, writes murder mysteries, dabbles in theater and takes care of three kids – two of whom are teens and the oldest one is about fifty-something.

He and I were roommates at one time. I was hanging out with him one evening when he said he had his eye on this Lorie chick, and asked me if I thought he had a chance with her. I said yes, he certainly did, so in a way I’m responsible for the rest of her life after that, including making sure she gets a firm grasp on things like Twitter.

So here we go..

Lorie, I’m glad you signed up on Twitter. I hope people follow you, and by people I don’t mean internet marketers, spammers and life-coaches, although they will. I mean people as in cool people like coffeesister and myself, who don’t want to sell you anything or have you sign-up for our course or teach you how to market stuff. We just want to know when you’re going shopping and when Joseph comes home with a black eye (his first fight, yay!) and when Larry gripes about something.

On second thought, hold off on the last one or you’ll be tweeting all day.

Yes, they call it “tweeting,” because it’s on Twitter. Get it? It’s also been called micro-blogging, wherein you say something in 140 characters or less (including spaces.) Sometimes that’s kind of a challenge, especially for a chatter-box like me, but it’s also a good exercise in literary brevity and streamlining your writing, as long as you don’t get into the habit of wrtng lk ths 2 save lttrs.

That’s BAD.

You can tweet about whatever you want. But you will find that a lot of people will bail on you (unfollow you) if you do nothing but provide links to your blog or something else, without trying to add some creativity to it. This goes for regular stuff too, like that trip to the market. It helps to be creative.

EXAMPLES

1. I’m going to the market now with Jessica.
2. I’m going to the market now with Jessica – I wonder if I can trade her in for a box of frozen fish sticks?

So which tweet do you think people will find more entertaining? No, NOT the first one! *eye roll* The second one not only tells your followers that you’re headed to the market, but it makes a joke that’s funny to everyone but Jessica, who won’t follow you anyway because you’re her mom and she’s sixteen years old.

I won a bunch of stuff one time with one of my tweets. Seriously! Someone had a contest and a panel of judges voted on the funniest tweet. I won with this one..

Yeah, I know, huh? But they really did send me some books and stuff because of that tweet.

Of course you don’t need to be silly and make jokes all the time, but keep in mind that if you have a bunch of people following you who you don’t know, then they really don’t care if you’re just going to the market. But they will definitely want to know if you succeed in trading Jessica in for a package of fish sticks.

Aside from what to tweet, because you can tweet whatever you want, let’s get into the nuts and bolts of it now and answer that question, “How do I reply to someone on Twitter?”

NUTS AND BOLTS

Let’s start with the main page at Twitter.com – open it up in another window and follow along here. You should have the HOME page open, where the URL up in the address bar of your browser will say..

http://twitter.com/

Below is a screen capture of what I see on mine. The colors are different than what you see on yours because I’ve adjusted them to how I like them, which you can do also. Stick with me and I’ll learn ya how to do that later.

What you’re seeing spilling down the middle of your screen are all the tweets from the people you’re following, in order from top to bottom of the most recent. In the picture above you can see tweets from people I’m following, including country singer Taylor Swift (taylorswift13).. hey, she’s FUNNY!

See? That’s the creativity I was talking about earlier. I personally think Taylor Swift should win some kind of Twitter Grammy.

At the very top above all of the tweets is the form window where you enter anything you want to tweet. I know you have all of that figured out, so lets just say these things for the people who don’t.

TWEETING

Above that form it says, “What are you doing?” You don’t need to actually tweet what you’re doing – you can tweet, “The price of apples is ridiculous!” or “Is it possible for one man to change the world? Yes, I believe so.. if he has a big enough diaper.“

Oh, wait.. that last one is one of mine again.

If your form is empty, there is a number – 140 – over to the right above it. As you type your tweet into the form, the number gets smaller. This is because with every keystroke you kill a kitten, and there were only 140 kittens to start with. The number shows you how many kittens are left mewing and begging for mercy.

Just kidding! It shows how many characters you have left. You can go over the limit and it will show you a minus sign and start counting the other way, which is really cool. Thats because you can edit your tweet down after finishing it. Some things that only let you have a certain amount of kittens.. er, uh.. characters.. just stop when you get to the limit.

They suck.

With the way Twitter has it, you can type a tweet that’s 160 characters long, and then just go back and delete a few words to get it down to 140 or less.

Cool, huh?

Just don’t go thinking you’re going to get a 160 character tweet out there, because it will cut you off. You’re nobody special and neither am I, and even if we were special it would cut us off. It’s a stern, cold mistress, uncaring and rigid.

So, type your tweet of 140 characters or less and hit “UPDATE.” Congratulations, it’s now out there in the “tweet stream.” Anyone can see it. But only people who are following you can see it. Both statements are true. That’s where Twitter gets weird, or wonderful, depending on how you look at it.

We’ll get into that shortly.

Now lets go down to the tweets themselves from people you are following. There are elements to each one, and in this part we’ll cover your “how do I reply?” question. Lets say that the last tweet from someone came from me. Chances are it didn’t, but lets just play make-believe. You’ll see my avatar, which looks like this..

Some people use real pictures of themselves, but I’m partial to that iconic father figure of the early nineteen sixties, Ward Cleaver, and his penchant for coffee in dainty teacups. He’s kind of a manly man’s man, but with a soft and tender side , which describes me to a tea. (HAR!)

I’ve noticed that YOU use a picture of a galloping ocean horse..

That’s perfect, because I’ve known you for twenty years and if there’s one thing that comes to mind whenever I think of you it’s wet, breathless, sandy horses.

My whole point about the avatar, whether it be a person’s actual face, an iconic figure of classic television or a galloping steed, is that if you click on it you will be taken to the person’s Twitter profile. This will also happen if you click on their Twitter name just to the right of the avatar, which proceeds every tweet.

Okay, so after their Twitter name you have their tweet. Sometimes their tweet will be replying to someone else and/or they will have a link included in it. If there is a link you can click on it and see where it goes. If there is only a link with no message, and it looks like they do that a lot,  then that person is boring and you should unfollow them.

If they are replying to someone, you will know this because at the beginning of the tweet you will see the @ symbol followed by the person’s Twitter name, but it will be scrunched together. If I reply to you it will say @mysteryrat. If I reply to Barack Obama and you happen to be following him too, it will say @barackobama.

Yes, the President and I tweet back and forth quite a bit. He loves my advice. I told him to go to Russia.

Under their tweet is something that will tell you how long ago they tweeted, and what application they were using to do so. Let’s take a look at the most recent Taylor Swift tweet (as of this posting)..

It says that she tweeted about 1 hour ago from the web. The part that says “about 1 hour ago” is a link to the actual tweet itself, and if you click on it, it’ll pop-up (unless she deletes it) looking like this..

Notice that it now says “about 2 hours ago from web.” This is because I had to go put on a Taylor Swift CD due to all this talk about her, and didn’t grab the screen capture until some time later. I like that song about the horse.

The “from web” part is not a link because Taylor was either using the Twitter website itself or a phone application that uses mobile web and won’t say what the application is. If she were using a program like Tweetdeck or Seesmic Desktop to tweet with, it would say “from Tweetdeck” or “from Seesmic Desktop” and it would be a link to the websites where you can get those programs.

I know you don’t know what those are – we’re going to get to them later. First, look at her tweet again as it appears on the tweet stream at my Twitter page..

You see that little star on the upper right? That’s so I can “favorite it.” If I like this tweet a whole lot, I click that star and it gets added to my list of favorites that I can access by clicking “favorites” over on the right sidebar of my Twitter page. Anyone can click that and look at my favorites and yours, and I can look at theirs, as can you, which means we can both look at Taylor Swift’s. I was going to screen grab hers but she doesn’t have any.

Silly girl.

Alright, so finally we answer the question, “How do I reply to someone?” That’s what the little arrow is for on the right side under the star – you’d click that to reply to Taylor Swift. She won’t see it though, because of this..

She’s following 20 people on Twitter and BEING FOLLOWED BY 845,793. The reason she won’t see your reply is that every time she tweets something – no matter what it is – she gets deluged with replies from people trying to get noticed by her because she’s a big-shot singing star. She could tweet the word “BOOGERS” and get a thousand instant replies from people saying things like, “Boogers are delicious!” and “Taylor can I get an autographed booger from you?”

I’m following a handful of celebrities and I’ve gotten a few replies back when I’ve messaged them, but it surprised me..

Alyssa Milano and Kirstie Alley have both replied to me several times each, so we’re like buds now or something.

Okay, so to reply you can click that arrow and then up in the form box you will see that it automatically starts your tweet off with who you’re replying too. If you were replying to me and you clicked that arrow, your tweet is already started with @rhodester. So you can do that, OR..

..you can just type @rhodester in the form box and it will be a reply for me. Here’s a little trick to know.. if you BEGIN your tweet with @rhodester, then only me and people who are following both of us will see it. In other words, if someone is following you but not me, they won’t see it. But if you put it somewhere in your tweet other than the beginning, then everyone who follows you will see it whether they follow me or not. I mean like this..

“My pal @rhodester is an idiot”

That way I’ll still get it in my replies. But if you put “My pal rhodester is an idiot” I won’t get it in my replies because you didn’t use the @ symbol, which addresses it to me no matter where in the tweet it is. I might see it if I happen to be watching your tweets but it won’t be waiting for me in my replies section, all patient and cozy. That’s a big mistake that newbie twittererz often make.

There’s one more way you can message me, and that’s directly, which is private. On someone’s tweets there is no direct message thingy to click, so you have to type it into the box. You type the letter “d” and then the person’s username, but unlike the @sign you leave a space. So to REPLY to me you put..

@rhodester and follow it with your message.

..but to DIRECT MESSAGE me, you put..

d rhodester and follow it with your message.

Direct messages are only seen by you and the person you send them to, and they don’t show up in your tweet stream. They are totally private. The one hitch is that a person has to be following you in order for you to direct message them. Otherwise, you can reply to them using the @ sign but it’s very public.. anyone who looks at their tweet stream can see it.

Next we’re going to be moving over to the right and taking a look at the settings and sidebar on the Twitter page. That will be in the next post. For now, go ride your horse.. the tide is out.

RhodesTer on Twitter/Subscribe to this blog

Tagged as: Taylor Swift, Twitter, twitter celebrities, Twitter instruction