Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Twitter for Dummies (and for the rest of us):



Twitter the word has caught quite an attention and spotlight in the past few year's,with the newspaper's writing everyday about the celebrities tweets or updates it only intrigues one to know more and ultimately join and see what all the buzz is all about the What's happening phenomena(TWITTER).This post will give you complete details from the very start to answering aall your questions in detail.Let me go step by step to make it reader-freindly and pro bably earn some followers :D.
1) Simple yet important sign up on twitter by logging on to www.twitter.com
2) Give in your details unless you don't want to dispatch it,select a good username you can always change it later.
2.1) Follow some like-minded people,there are numerous celebrities perhaps the one's you love are there too,follow them if you like,caution don't follow too many people,seriously yu think you can go through all their tweets,keep a limit.
2.2) Timeline or TL is your homepage where the tweets of whom you follow appear.
3) If you have followed the previous two steps.let's get into some facts,terminologies and functions,don't you want to be an know-it-all even when you start?
4) Tweet is a term used for the updates orreplies you make on twitter,as everything has string so does this one too,it is limited to 140 character's only,short and sweet.
4.1) @ replies:usually many ask me what's the fuss about @replies?why does twitter compliate replies cant it be simple like facebook comments?Well on twitter when someine posts a tweet you reply to it by adding a "@" symbol follwed by their username it has to be correct or it will be directed to someone else,this gives us a fair advantage of replying to a specific user easily unlike the complications on facebook where in a threaded conversation one can get confused who is sayin what to who?here to u can @ reply to many by adding @ symbol followed by their username.simple isn't it?
4.2) Retweet or commonly called RT's is a very awesome function on twitter where on can repost a tweet by someone by just a click no copy no paste and no complaints of plagiarism as it mentions the original tweeter too.
4.2.1) There are two kinds of RT's the old editable style and the new style:the old style is where before retweeting you can modify that tweet whilst in the new stly you can't.
           **Am i boring you ok here is a fact that was observed and researched for 2 full year's where the results found that most of the twitter users that is 75%+ used twitter on mobile and the rest 25%
only on computers and laptops.**
4.3) Trends is first of its kind popular feature in soial networking sites is on twitter and its a widely appreciated feature very useful and fun!!When something noteworthy happens everyone of us talk about it,similarly when u tweet those or when many people tweet about a common topic it becomes a trend as for example when the superbowl or cricket world cup went when the world was tweeting it it became a trend hence trends change very quickly as topics change very frequently GOD forbid but when an earthquake occurs everyone talks about it becomes a trend,or when a new disney movie comes out it becomes a trend!!Trends bar appear on the side of the twitter page one can actually choose to see what's trending in their country or even now in cities although only a limited set of popularly twitter using countries are included!!
4.4) Follwed by Trends ,i want to say about the eer-intriguing "#"tag or Hashtag,like "@" "#" is another feature of twitter,where an user can add this # before any topic,usually the #tag comes wih a trending topic or trends,so for example take in case of Worldcup2011,when everyone is talking about it people just add a #tag before Worldcup2011--->#Worldcup2011 so when all the users use this hashtag,when an user searches for #Worldcup2011 all tweets tweetd by users which has this #Worldcup2011 comes in a page,hence making an unison of tweets of same topic and makes it easy see the different opinions of different users in a same page.isn't it cool?But this doesnot limit an user to add #tags before trending topics alone,in one's tweet one can addd their names too or anything for that matter,for eample this blog's name antidoze hence #antidoze so all the tweeters tweeting with #antidoze comes in a same page simple :D.
        **Twitter has a counter like thing on the top of the profile page or home page of each specific user where it shows the user's no.of tweets(one's replies and retweets are also counted as tweets)it also shows one's no.of followers and the following count**
5) coming to follower's and following count many of my firnds on twitter usually say they are intimidated by the no.of followers many have and they have less,one answer don't care,you are here to express yourself don't care if anyone cares,if there are people who are likeminded and love your tweets they will follow.keep it at bay it should be the least of concerns on twitter.
I think i have fed you with all that i know,and probably bored you,well i want you to know everything.


??Questions??

1) How to tweet?
-The answer is why you care,what yo want to tweet you tweet,but donot tweet like i am going for a bath, i just had panipuri.ok for the first time it may look cute but repeteadly you understand right?
That's why my 4.3 point talks about trends check what's trending in your country,join a conversation,throw some light by giving different opinions,share your point and perhaps prove it.twitter is an easy way to share knowledge and probably engage in some good conversaation which isn't limited to just  closed knit community or a group of your friends your tweet flies accross the globe reacjing billions,be happy your thoughts may be in a computer in India,australia,UK,kenya,argentina or switzerland.

2)How to join a conersation?
-Good question!!when u see a trend search result or maybe on ur TL reply your views,differences,acceptance,rejections perhaps deception hahah.as my point 4.1 says @replies are the best to join in anything and everything,u don't have to follow them or they have to be your friendlike in facebook no crap here,you are a free bird,but if you abuse or do something bad,baddy baddy twitter has given option to block any user by a specific user,so be careful and wise!!

3) How to follow someone?
-when you visit an user's page there is a button to follow them or if they have an protcted account you can send a follow request.

4) when to tweet?
-That depends on your share of knowledge,and your mood no one stops and don't tweet too much in a limited period by too much i mean like a 150 tweet in an hour,twitter has limited an user to 1000 tweets a day and has semi-hourly suspension too.so too much tweeting may not lead to quitting but suspension for an hour or +half!
                         **On conclusion i just want to say be yourself and don't impersonate someone,everyone likes everyone because they are them,not because one is like this and the other wants to be like that.Wannabe's no no no!!!**

Just out of personal research and interest i will give you a list of twitter clients you can use n laptops,ipads and mobiles.

For Desktop(windows):
1)Tweedeck
2)Hootsuite
3)DestroyTwitter

For Desktop(MAC):
1)Twitter for MAC
2)Tweetie for MAC

For Iphone's:
1)Echofon
2)Twitter for iphone
3)Twinkle
4)Twitterific
5)Twitfire

For blackberry:
1)Twitter for blackberry
2)Twitterberry
3)Blackbird
4)TinyTwitter

For Nokia:
1)OVI by Nokia
2)Twittix
3)Gravity
4)Twitter for symbian
5)Twibble

For other mobiles:
1)Jtwitter
2)Twim
3)Snaptu
4)j1ck.tweet
5)Dabr(www.dabr.co.uk)
6)Slandr(www.slandr.net)

Follow me on Twitter: @hameedazar

Friend me on Facebook:http://facebook.com/hameedazar

-Hameed Azar

Thank you for your patience,Happy Tweeting

Disclaimer:
1)This Blog is just for information,not to promote or Demote any brands or
services.
2)This blog is not associated with Rich Tennant's series of FOR DUMMIES.
3)This Blog post or the blog doesnot belong to twitter and its written with personal interest for sharing of knowledge alone.





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