You’re all settled with your new Twitter account, and you’re now wondering what all those funny words you’re hearing are all about ? Let’s have an overview

Reply/Mentions @:

• Twitter is about telling your friends (and the world) what you’re doing, so you should expect them to reply – but how do you know when that happens ? You just have to click on @yourtwittername in the right sidebar, and you’ll see all your replies (and actually all people mentioning you – that’s why Twitter changed the name from Reply to Mentions).
• If you want to reply to someone, hit the reply button (on the right of each tweet) and your tweet will start with @yourfriendsname and he’ll be notified about this reply

Retweet (RT):

• Another way of being mentioned is via an RT. What does RT mean ?? RT is the Twitter acronym for ReTweet.
• If you read a tweet that you find interesting, you can share it with your own friends by retweeting it. It’s similar to an email forward, but probably more viral.
• To do that, the standard usage is to retweet by using “RT” followed by the twitterer’s name “@theguyyouretweet” and then the original tweet : “RT @theguyyouretweet hisoriginaltweet”
• You can also retweet by sharing the original tweet and adding “via @theguyyouretweet” : “hisoriginaltweet (via @theguyyouretweet) – this method actually allows you to mention several people (if there is a chain of RTs)
• There are other tools to retweet, we’ll cover them later !

Direct Message (DM):

• “If interested, please DM me” : many tweets end like this, but the first time you read that, you have no clue what it means.
• DM means Direct Message, so that means that a conversation can continue in private mode – a DM can only be read by the recipient (yes, you think it right : it’s like email, but in less than 140 charachters!)
• To DM someone, the syntax is “D” + @username + your private message : “D @yourdearfriend I think we should take this offline”
• Note that you can change your settings to receive DMs by SMS (in the UK, only on Vodafone and O2)

Hashtags (#):

• Why are some messages ending with #fail or #mj or #whateverconference ? Those are hashtags and are used to refer to a common topic.
• If you are at a conference, you can add the conference hashtag so people searching for real-time news from the conference can search for it via twitter. Strange as it seams, this is one of the most poweful tool for real-time search
• Using hashtags will help you to get noticed, but you’ll have to avoid spamming everyone (eg Habitat UK using hashtag #iran…
• Hashtags are also used by Twitter to expose Trending topics (in the right sidebar)

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