Chapter 11

Tweeting about Your Life

In This Chapter

Getting acquainted with Twitter

Reading other people’s tweets

Organizing the flood of tweets

Sending your own tweets when you’re ready to say something

Twitter on your phone

The Internet can let the world know the details of your life as it happens. How can you tell your friends right away that you found an outstanding purchase at the mall? Or that you have something stuck in your teeth? And how can you receive these vital messages from your friends even when you’re not at home? Twitter (at www.twitter.com) is the answer. The service lets you post updates as often as you want, no matter where you are. This level of detail can, of course, be a mixed blessing. A friend of ours likens Twitter to a continuously updated Christmas letter.

When you create a free Twitter account, you create a micro-blog that allows only very short entries, no more than 140 characters each, known as tweets. You can send as many tweets as you want, and some people send many indeed. The simplest way is to log in to Twitter and type a line in the box at the top of the page, but you can also tweet from any of a vast number of Twitter-compatible programs, plug-ins on websites such as Facebook, as well as from your mobile phone. (See the section “Twitter on your phone or tablet,” later in this chapter.)

Every user’s tweets are visible on a web page; for example, President Barack Obama’s tweets are visible at www.twitter.com/barackobama. Because it would be tedious to have to check every page of every person you’re interested in, you can follow other Twitter users. Then on your Twitter home page, you see, in one chaotic list, all the tweets from everyone you’re following. Twitter saves and indexes all tweets, and you can search for words and phrases to find recent tweets of interest.

Getting Started

To get started using Twitter, visit www.twitter.com. The website invites you to provide your name (which helps your friends find you on Twitter) as well as your password, and email address. When you click the Sign Up button, Twitter asks a few more questions and suggests a username based on the name you entered. Your username is your handle on Twitter, and other Twitter users refer to you by it. You can choose a username that’s fun and different from your given name. In fact, unless your given name is rather unusual, you have to choose a different one because your username has to be different from the names of all 175 million existing Twitter accounts.

Don’t forget to check the email address that you’ve provided during registration; Twitter sends an email to that address with a confirmation link.

Twitter in your browser

Figure 11-1 shows what Twitter looks like once you are logged in, including information about yourself, suggestions for other Twitter users that might interest you, and a series of recent tweets, most recent at the top. Remember that like all websites, Twitter may redesign its site at any moment, so it may not look or act exactly as we show and describe in this chapter.

Twitter on your phone or tablet

Web browsers are so 20th century — far too antiquated for today’s modern twitterati. Mobile applications aim to make Twitter easier to use on your smartphone or tablet. They generally do not require you to use text messaging, but instead let you access Twitter by using simplified layouts designed for small screens.

Official Twitter apps are available for the iPhone (shown in Figure 11-2), Android, and other types of devices. Other apps and programs are also available if you want to monitor Twitter traffic and schedule outgoing tweets; see “Getting Serious about Twitter” at the end of this chapter.

Reading Tweets and Following Twitterers

To get started, read Twitter for a while to get the idea. Most people use Twitter to find out what’s going on right now. Wait to tweet until you have the general idea and have something of interest to say. (We do a lot of reading and very, very little actual tweeting.)

Twitter can suggest what to read. Trending hashtags are hashtags that are very popular right now, so clicking them is a good way to find out what’s current. Click the Discover icon (a hash or pound sign) on a Twitter web page to see what’s trending (the list may also appear on your Twitter home page, if your screen is big enough). On a phone or tablet, brush the screen from right to left to switch to the Discover screen.

Searching the universe of tweets

You can search for people you know by entering their names into the Search box. (On a phone or tablet, you may need to click the magnifying-glass Search icon to see the Search box.) A surprising number of people and organizations use Twitter to send out announcements and updates. They range from pop stars (try username LadyGaga) to politicians (SenWarren). Even the fictional Lord Voldemort, The Dark Lord of the Harry Potter series (Lord_Voldemort7), is on Twitter.

You can also enter a keyword (such as soccer or quilting) into the Search box to find people who tweet about these subjects. Or you can click on the list of possible interests suggested by Twitter after you set up your account. For example, right after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, you could read up-to-the-minute tweets from Japan by searching for Japan, earthquake, or tsunami. Try searching for the name or location of events in the news.

Click the Home icon in the upper left corner of the web page (or the Timeline icon at the bottom of your phone or tablet screen) to return to your Twitter home page (similar to Figure 11-1).

What’s with all this weird punctuation?

As you read Twitter, you see a number of punctuation marks thrown in, apparently at random. Believe it or not, they mean something:

• A hash mark (#), (or what we still refer to as a sharp sign) appears at the beginning of a word to indicate that it’s a hashtag, or a subject or keyword that people can search for. As you read tweets, look at their hashtags. If they appear in tweets that interest you, you can search for that hashtag to find other tweets about it.
• An at-sign (@) appears in front of someone’s Twitter username. For example, mentions of the U.S. president look like @BarackObama.

Hey, I like this person’s tweets

As you’re browsing lists of twitterers, you may see a person or an organization whose tweets you want to receive. You can see a person’s Twitter profile page by clicking their username. Or, go to twitter.com/username in your browser. If they look interesting and you want to see their future tweets, click the Follow button.

If you choose to follow a twitterer whose profile is private, she must approve your request before you can see her tweets. Otherwise, your request is approved automatically. Keep in mind that just because you’re following someone doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s following you.

Another way to find your friends on Twitter is by using the Find Friends feature: Click the Home button in the upper left corner of the page of the Twitter web page, look at the Who To Follow list, and click Find Friends at the bottom of that list. Twitter displays a bunch of buttons for widely used webmail and social media accounts, such as AOL, Gmail, LinkedIn, and Facebook. You can click one to give Twitter access to your address book for that account and then identify people that you know on Twitter.

Twitter has a culture all of its own, but it’s easier to simply watch the tweets scroll by and see the style rather than try to explain it.

How to Not Become Overwhelmed by All Those Tweets

After you read Twitter for more than about 15 minutes, you see that the volume is immense and that some of it is a lot more interesting than the rest.

Lists of your Twitter friends

When you log in to Twitter and view your home page, the Tweets section shows a list of all tweets from everyone you follow, with the tweets in reverse chronological order, most recent first. Eventually, you may be following so many other twitterers that it’s hard to keep track of them all. This is when it’s helpful to group Twitter accounts into lists.

For example, you may decide to have one list for your close friends, another list for your colleagues, and a third list for news organizations. The beauty of having lists is that they allow you to see all tweets from one group of people in one place.

To set up a list, go to your profile page by clicking your name on your home page, then More > Lists. You see the lists you’ve already created followed by a Create New List button. Choose a list name and description. You can also choose whether your list is public or private. Choose Private to make your list completely invisible to the outside world. For example, if you’re setting up a list named My Real Friends, you can set that list to private so that no one else can see who is on the list, or even that the list exists. Then click Save List.

Many people enjoy creating public lists to help other people with similar interests. If you make your Favorite Mystery Authors list public, other mystery readers may come across the list and choose to follow it. If someone follows your list, your list is added to her collection of lists and she can easily visit it.

To add a twitterer to your list, visit your profile and then click the little gear-like Settings and Help icon. Click Add or Remove from Lists and select the list(s) to which you want to add them.

Saving your searches

Saved searches provide another way to sort through the avalanche of tweets and find the news you truly want. To create a search, enter one or more search terms into the Search box at the top of the page on Twitter. When viewing your search results, click the Save button in the upper-right corner. From any Twitter page, you can click in the Search box to see both your recent searches and your saved searches; select a saved search to see its latest results.

Preparing to Tweet

Reading tweets doesn’t reveal much information about you to the world. But before you start tweeting, be sure to set your privacy settings, and others, to control who can see what.

Your Twitter profile

When you sign up for a Twitter account, you have the bare bones of a profile in place. But there’s much more to add. To write additional information about yourself and to choose a look and feel for your profile, follow these steps:

1. Click the Profile and Settings icon (your picture or a little gear) at the top of any Twitter web page (www.twitter.com) and choose View Profile.

   If Twitter has redesigned its pages since we wrote this chapter, you might have to look around. And if you aren’t logged in, you won’t see it. Once you’ve located and clicked your link or icon, you see a page with your Twitter username and recent tweets (and retweets).

2. Click the Edit Profile button on the right side of the page.

   You see a page that looks like Figure 11-3. You can upload a photograph of yourself, upload a wide header picture to appear across the top of your page, enter your location, write a brief bio, and add the URL of your website, such as to your blog or Facebook profile. You can also change the background color of your profile. This information is available to any Twitter user, so don’t include anything you’d want to keep private.

3. Make your changes and click Save Changes.

Private tweeting

Normally, your Twitter account is public, so anyone can view and follow your tweets. If you’re one of the rare people who would rather not have every random person in the world watching what you say, click the Profile and Settings icon (your photo or a gear) in the upper right corner of any Twitter page and click Settings. Down the left side of the page is a list of the types of settings you can change. Click Security and Privacy and select the Protect My Tweets check box to limit the visibility of your tweets to people you approve. Scroll down and click Save Changes.

Whether or not you approve someone to read your tweets, she can still see that your account exists. For example, if you follow someone, she can see you on her list of followers, along with your username, full name, photo, and bio.

How to Tweet

The simplest way to send a tweet is by visiting the Twitter home page at www.twitter.com or clicking the feather-pen Compose icon in the upper right corner of your mobile Twitter app. Type a message of 140 characters or fewer into the Compose New Tweet box and clicking the Tweet button to publish your tweet. That’s it!

Be sure to proofread your tweet before publishing it. And never tweet in anger. After a tweet is out there, it’s out there forever.

Hashtags identify keywords

To help people find a particular tweet, insert a hashtag (a word starting with the # pound sign character) into a tweet to specify that it’s related to other tweets with the same topic tag. For example, include #green in your tweets about saving the planet.

Including a web address in your tweet

When all you want to do is share a few words, sending a tweet by way of Twitter is the simplest way. But what about when you want to include a link in your tweet?

Web addresses can be long, and tweets have to be short. What to do? Nothing, it turns out. Twitter automatically shortens nearly all URLs using their t.co shortener, so the shortened version is never more than 20 characters, no matter how long the original was. Paste a long URL into the Compose New Tweet box and see what happens.

Replying and retweeting

Figure 11-4 shows a series of tweets. Below each one are a series of icons:

• Reply (left-pointing arrow): Sometimes, you may want to reply to another user’s message. If you start a message with the @ sign and the name of a user, the message is a reply to that user; clicking the Reply icon starts composing a new message with the user’s username already entered for you. Or, you can insert @user in the middle of a tweet, as a mention. In either case, the user you reply to or mention sees your message whenever she clicks the Notifications icon (a bell, last we checked) on the Twitter home page.
• Retweet (two arrows making a square): If you see a tweet from a friend that you want to share with your own followers, go for it! Just give her credit by starting your tweet with RT @username and then repeating her words. Or click the Retweet button to do the same thing. Don’t be shy about retweeting — people love that kind of shout-out.
• Favorite (star): If you particularly like someone’s tweet, you can mark it as a Favorite by clicking the star. A star appears by the tweet, and the person who sent the tweet can see how many people “favorite” it.

If you want people to retweet your tweet, make it a little shorter than 140 characters to give them space to add “RT” and your username.

I’m talking only to you: direct messages

You can also send a direct message to someone, although it has to be someone who is following you. Click the Direct Messages icon (a little envelope) in the upper right corner of the page to see a list of the direct messages you’ve received and then click the New Message button. Type the person’s Twitter username and your message. Then click the Send Message button. A direct message isn’t visible to anyone else — only to the person that you sent it to.

Let’s all tweet at the same time

A tweetchat is an event where a bunch of people tweet at the same time about the same subject using the same hashtag. It’s a great way to have a public discussion on a topic. If you hear about a tweetchat, all you need to know to participate is the date and time to fire up your browser or Twitter app and the hashtag that will be included in all the tweets. At that time, search for that hashtag and follow along. If you want to chime in, reply to a tweet or compose your own tweet including the hashtag.

Getting Serious about Twitter

Twitter is so popular that many programs are available to make it simpler to send tweets, follow people, and find tweets on specific topics. Here are two:

• HootSuite (www.hootsuite.com): This popular Twitter application can be accessed from a browser window and used as a desktop application. You can use it to schedule a series of outgoing tweets.
• TweetDeck (www.tweetdeck.com): This program (provided by Twitter itself) runs on Windows and Macs (and on Google Chrome), and you can configure it to display tweets from people you follow, tweets that mention specific topics, tweets from Twitter lists, and more.

HootSuite and TweetDeck also let you view updates from your friends on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networks. To find more Twitter-related programs, search the web for Twitter applications. For more information about the Twitterverse, including the etiquette of tweeting and following, get Twitter For Dummies, by Laura Fitton, Anum Hussain, and Brittany Leaning (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).