The Wpromoter

The Intermediate Tweeter – Intertweetiate?

Josh Tauber | February 20th, 2009

by Josh Tauber
Director, Viral Marketing & SMO
twitter.com/JoshTauber

OK, we get it. Twitter is amazing and it can do amazing things. We have all jumped on the bandwagon and are posting a few times here and there, but now what? Here you will find a few examples of what those symbols and weird words mean, as well as some resources to bring you to the next level – an “intertweetiate”. There is no real true way of tweeting but a bit of a standard is being formed. Hopefully this will help you with some of the top twitterizms.

@Username: This allows you to tweet at someone. If you see that someone you follow asks a question about something, you can respond to them directly(or if you spied on someone through a third party app like tweetdeck.. more on this below). To do this, simply hit the respond arrow (on the web) or type @(their user name) and type away. Once you post the tweet the user is notified directly!

Retweet: A retweet is just that. If a person finds that someone has an interesting tweet and feel the need to spread the word, they simply retweet. A retweet is noted by either “RT” or “RT:” then the copied tweet is pasted afterwards. See example below:

#word: This is called a hash. It allows you to keep track of certain topics or tweets from an event such as a conference. To really maximize your tracking capabilities you should follow @hashtags. Hashtags is a great tool that will keep an aggregate of all your tweets from each hash. See example below:

Once you have learned the language of twitter you might find these applications more than crucial as a tool for any SMO’er or heavy twitter user.

Tweetdeck: Tweet Deck takes information from Twitter and breaks it down into smaller, more manageable pieces. Tweet Deck can split there main feed into different columns such as @replies, direct messages, and multiple searches. These columns will continually update as Tweet Deck runs on your desktop. http://www.tweetdeck.com/

Twhirl: Twhirl is a desktop application that allows monitoring of multiple accounts on multiple microblogging websites. It’s compatible with both Macs and PCs. Twhirl notifies users of new messages, shortens URLS, cross post updates to sites like Facebook and MySpace, post images to TwitPic and searches Twitter via Twitter Search. http://twhirl.org/

Splitweet: Splitweet is a web-based application that allows users to manage multiple corporate Twitter accounts at once. Tweets can be sent to multiple accounts at once time. Splitweet can also show you when someone else tweets about your brand. http://splitweet.com/

FriendorFollow: FriendorFollow uses Twitter profile pictures to breakdown the differences in your followers to who you follow (and vice versa) on one screen. You can easily manage your list of followers and friends based on the information given to you by FriendorFollow. http://friendorfollow.com/