Twitter Terminology for Beginners

Twitter has been around for a few years but it has gained popularity in the last year. Businesses, celebrities, and bloggers have helped make Twitter almost a household name. Twitter, like any other website, comes with it's own terminology.

Twitter Terminology: Tweet

A tweet is the message you post. Tweets are 140 characters or less so they have to be precise and sometimes have unusual abbreviations and grammatical errors. Tweets can be about you, your day, your business or anything!

Twitter Terminology: Followers

Followers are people that have added you and want to read your tweets. All tweets are public by default (you can make them private if you wish), but these people will see your tweets in their timeline. People normally have hundreds if not thousands of followers.

Twitter Terminology: Lists

Lists are relatively new to Twitter. They are a way to organize the people you follow. For example, I have followers for handmade and vintage sellers on Etsy or Artfire, photographers, writers, and celebrities. This way when I just want to read up on photography I just select that list.

Twitter Terminology: Timeline

This is the main page you see on Twitter.com and where the updates are for the people you follow. They will be in chronological order starting with the most recent. The page will not update the tweets, but will show you there are new ones to read.

Twitter Terminology: @ Reply

If you want a tweet posted in your public timeline and are talking to someone specifically, use the @ symbol before their Twitter name. Example, @username and it will show up in their @ replies timeline on Twitter.com.

Twitter Terminology: DM or Direct Message

This is a private message between you and another user. These do not show up on the public timeline for either of you.

Twitter Terminology: RT or Retweet

This is when you copy a tweet that shows in your timeline. This will now allow your followers to read the message. Retweets look like this: RT @username. Normally copying is not allowed, but in Twitter you may want people to retweet your information.

Twitter Terminology: Hash Tags #

Hash tags are a way to follow a specific topic on Twitter. It's usually a single word beginning with the number sign (#). This way you only pick up those tweets who have used the hash tag and not tweets who are using the word for other subjects.

Twitter Terminology: Trending Topics

Trending topics are the top topics being discussed on Twitter right then. Usually they have a hash tag before them, but not always. They are normally current events, a TV show, or sometimes something funny that has caught on.

Twitter Terminology: Fail Whale

Twitter has gotten so popular that sometimes there are so many users on the site that it goes down for a few moments. When this happens you'll see a blue screen with a cartoon whale, or the fail whale.

Twitter Terminology: Twitter Clients

Not everyone uses Twitter.com to tweet. There are programs to download to your computer to tweet and websites that use Twitter's API to tweet. Most smart phones use applications to tweet rather than through text. These are known as Twitter clients.

Twitter Terminology: URL Shortener

Because tweets must be less than 140 characters, long URLs can't always be posted. You can use a URL shortener to turn a long URL into just a few characters. The most common URL shortener is tinyurl.com.