The third (and final) post in which I explain Twitter to Lorie

Okay, so in continuing here, wherein I answered my friend Lorie’s question “How do I reply to someone on Twitter?” in the first post using only 2000 words, let’s continue from where we left off in the last post and address some of the functions on the Twitter homepage sidebar, which looks like this..

This is my sidebar, so the colors may be different from yours because I really like that shade of blue, it makes me all wistful and stuff.

We covered the part showing “following/followers/updates” in the last post, so below that you see an advertisement. Twitter puts that there to help pay for the service, which I don’t mind because it’s better than having to watch chipmunks driving cars for thirty seconds while someone drones on about auto-insurance before you can watch the next episode of HEROES and find out what the heck is up with Claire, already. Thanks, HULU.COM.

Below the ad you see @Rhodester on my example given above, but on your Twitter page it’s going to say @Mysteryrat or @whatever your username is. These are your replies. Click on it and it will show you the latest replies you’ve gotten from anyone out there.

Let’s talk about replies for a minute or two.. or three..

This is a reply that I recently received from my friend Jonathan Crossfield, who happens to be an Australian writer and uses the name Kimota on Twitter..

Jonathan, aka Kimota, was replying to me about something. You can tell because at the beginning it says @Rhodester, but also down below the tweet it says “18 minutes ago from TweetDeck in reply to Rhodester.” That line underneath consists of links, wherein you can click on the “18 minutes ago* and it will show you the tweet all by itself and you can click on the word “TweetDeck” and it will send you HERE, where you can download the program Jonathan was using to reply to me.

But if that’s not what you’re after and all you really want to know is why Jonathan is talking about having breakfast with me, you can click on “in reply to Rhodester” and it will show you this..

This is the Tweet from me that he was replying to but didn’t really answer the question, so to see Jonathan’s terribly dumb joke that prompted the really bad joke from me that you see above, click on “in reply to Kimota” and you’ll get this..

Yeah, I know. Gross.

So that’s how you find out what someone said originally that the reply was addressing, and it’s really handy because I use it for my own tweets. Sometimes someone will reply to me four hours or more after I’ve tweeted something and, being in my golden years now, I forget what I originally said so I click on the “in reply to Rhodester” link and my original tweet pops up, which I never remember making, so I laugh at myself for being so witty.

Isn’t it great how just about everything else on the Internet, Facebook and MySpace included, have it so that when you post a comment, the comment someone posts in reply to you appears underneath it, and the next one after that, and so on.. they’re called “comment threads.” Don’t you thing it’d be great if somehow Twitter did that instead of you having to click on these stupid “in reply to” links? Yeah? Well, you and everyone else, my friend.

Continuing on the sidebar, you have your DIRECT MESSAGES section.

When you click this, you get all your direct messages listed and a form above where you can compose one to someone following you. Remember in the first post where I said you have to type..

d username type your message

..to send a direct message because Twitter doesn’t have something for you to click on to send one? I was wrong about that. I suck.

You go to the Direct Messages link on your sidebar and the form has a drop-down menu that lists all your followers, wherein you select one and send them a direct message. But it’s actually easier to type d username than go through all that, don’t you think?

Below the Direct Messages link you have the Favorites link, which will show you all of the tweets you’ve favorited by clicking the STAR on each one. I’m partial to hotdogsladies, aka Merlin Mann..

Under the favorites section of the Twitter sidebar you have a search box and, if you’ve saved any searches, you have a list of your saved searches. Mine are “Hilton Palm Springs” because I used to work there and I used to like seeing what people said about the place (just haven’t removed the search yet,) and “Palm Springs” because I live there and I like seeing what people say about the place.

The Twitter saved searches will show you whatever the latest tweets are about your subject in real-time whenever you click on them, so they’re always different and they’re from all twitter users who don’t have their updates protected (grrr!) – not just people you follow. Put your real name in there (first and last) and your hometown, or the name of someone you haven’t seen in years. Put your favorite actor, actress, model, singer, newsperson or writer. Type a word, like trees or apples or elves or a term like “pomegranate muffins.”

It’s quite entertaining to see what people are saying on Twitter about anything..

Next on the sidebar is Trending Topics.

These are the most popular subjects being tweeted about at this moment, in order of popularity from top to bottom. It changes rapidly, just like my opinion on most of the subjects shown.

Below that is a display of your followers.

You can add followers by clicking the little button that says add and they will give you a bunch of ways to do that, all of which are nonviolent and don’t use any coercion, so they’re really not that much fun.

Below that is an RSS link.

That’s to add whatever display is showing to a reader and keep up on it that way. You can add the home display, where it’s the tweet-stream of all your followers or your own tweet-stream. You can also add a search-stream. Whatever is showing currently on your display, even a search stream about elves in porn, pomegranate muffins or George Clooney, you can make an RSS feed for your reader.

If you don’t know what that is, I’m sorry. Maybe the elves will teach you.

So now you know how to Twitter.

It’s taken me about 5000 words to scratch the surface, and you barely know anything because it’s constantly changing and evolving, like a big rolling mass of bubbling internet goo. You’re not only going to get marketers following you, but life-style coaches who want to throw motivational sayings at you all day long, and spammers. Lots and lots of spammers. I block about ten of them a day and follow back maybe ONE person who follows me and looks halfway interesting. This is your typical spammer..

Following 96 with 0 following back and nothing but a link to a nude pics site – BLOCK. This type tries to get that link out there as much as possible before Twitter catches on and suspends this account, which happened within the hour of my grabbing this screen capture.. poor halcowboy160!

APPLICATIONS

All kinds of programs have popped up to help you use Twitter in a better way and they’re free to download and easy to install. Here are the two main ones for desktop computers (click to enlarge)..

TWEETDECK

SEESMIC DESKTOP

They both have all of the functions built-in, like replying, direct messaging, etc.. plus you can make columns. I make a column of users I like and leave out ones I don’t give a fig about. I even have a column of just the celebrity tweeters on my Seesmic Desktop but it’s empty in the screen shot because I pulled it up at about three in the morning. I guess they all went to bed.

There are extra bells and whistles on both of these programs too – things that Twitter doesn’t have on their site – like ways to add photos with one click and shorten URLS when you’re putting a link on there, and so on. I can’t and won’t say which one is better – I’ve used both but have been sticking with Seesmic lately, so.. uh.. whatever.

There are programs for mobile devices and I’ve heard that some company is developing a brain-wave interface so that you can tweet your dreams while sleeping.

Okay, I made that last part up but I’ll bet ten bucks it’s in development somewhere.

HAPPY TWEETING, MYSTERYRAT!

RhodesTer on Twitter/Facebook/Subscribe to this mess

Tagged as: Seesmic, Seesmic Desktop, TweetDeck, tweeting, Twitter