# Twitter. Can someone explain to me how this works? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 10, 2013, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twitter-can-someone-explain-to-me-how-this-works/649837 "2013-02-10T01:04:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Sudden\_Kestrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecd19e/32.png) [@Sudden\_Kestrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sudden_Kestrel)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2013, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twitter-can-someone-explain-to-me-how-this-works/649837/61 "2013-02-16T18:43:37Z")
> [@digs](#): > > How does anyone have time for multiple online “time-spenders”. > > I’m wasting too much time right here (well, usually lurking in the Pit). > If I were on The Faceybook or The Tweeter, I’d never get anything done in The Life. I’m sure I’m not using it right, but I only spend about 10 minutes a day scanning my feed on Twitter. It’s very, very light entertainment, sort of like the filler jokes in _Reader’s Digest_. ---
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2013, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twitter-can-someone-explain-to-me-how-this-works/649837/62 "2013-02-16T22:02:14Z")
> [@digs](#): > > How does anyone have time for multiple online “time-spenders”. > > I’m wasting too much time right here (well, usually lurking in the Pit). > If I were on The Faceybook or The Tweeter, I’d never get anything done in The Life. How do you have time to spend on the SDMB? The answer to that question is how anyone has time to spend on anything. You make time for the things you want to do. And I’m only on Twitter for a pretty short amount each day (if that) anyway. I spend most of my social media capital on the SDMB and Facebook. ---
**Author:** ![crypto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b3f665/32.png) [@crypto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crypto)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2013, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twitter-can-someone-explain-to-me-how-this-works/649837/63 "2013-02-16T23:51:41Z")
> [@Shayna](#): > > I use Twitter to interact with like-minded people on politics, to gain valuable information from obscure news sources people share, and to promote my business interests both in political messaging (my side business) and copy editing (my primary business). People do this no matter whether their interest is in tech, music, certain television shows, or a particular profession or hobby, etc. > > I have learned a tremendous amount from some very smart people. I have made actual friends whom I’ve since met in real life. I’ve been hired for freelance work, and I’ve found a person in my field who became my partner to cover my full-time copy editing gig when I need time off. > > I follow just over 2,000 people and about 1,900 follow me, but believe it or not those numbers are small potatoes in the politics-related Twitterverse. I follow many people with followerships in the tens of thousands. > > To really make it a worthwhile venue to participate in, you have to start following people. To figure out whom to follow, search a term you’re interested in and start reading the tweets that appear in the results. When you come across one you find interesting, click that person’s profile and read through their tweets. If you like what they have to say in general, follow them. _And this is key_ … send a tweet to them to the effect of, “Like your tweets and am following you now. Follow back? #Gratitude.” They will have gotten a notice that you’ve started following them, but reaching out personally and asking them to follow you back is the best way to get them to actually do it — not everyone automatically follows back everyone who follows them. > > Another way to then find more people to follow is to look at all the people whom the people you follow, follow. IOW, if you follow me because you like my tweets, go look at the list of people I follow, because you’re likely to find people on that list _you’d_ also find interesting to follow. > > The best way to get people to follow you is to do two things: Tweet and Retweet interesting stuff, and actually interact with people whose tweets you find interesting. The big celebrity people probably won’t respond to you, so tweet them directly only if you feel like wasting your time _or_ if you want to make a point about something they’ve tweeted that you want the people who follow you to see. That celebrity isn’t going to give a flip, but your followers may. > > However, if you reply to a tweet (be they a celebrity or average Jane), the only people who will see that tweet in their scrolling feed are the people who follow both you _and_ the recipient of the tweet. But most of the time you want your followers to see all your tweets, even those addressed to people they aren’t following themselves, so in order for that to happen you have to turn your “reply” into what Twitter calls a “mention,” because any time you “mention” someone within the body of a tweet, all your followers will get that tweet in their feed whether they follow the person mentioned in the tweet or not. And early on, Tweeps figured out that to turn a reply into a mention so everyone who follows you can see it with the fewest characters as possible, is to just put a dot in front of the @ sign. So … > @SFP That was funny! Love that band! > … is seen by you and by anyone following both you and me. But … > .@SFP That was funny! Love that band! > … is seen by you, anyone who follows both you and me, and anyone who follows me but not you. > > People who use hashtags (#) do so for a variety of reasons. > [ul] > [li]To have that tweet appear in a search that people with a specific interest consider themselves part of a group about. For instance, if you are a political conservative and want all other political conservatives no matter whom they follow, to be able to find a particular tweet you think is of importance to that community of Tweeps, put #tcot anywhere in your tweet. TCOT is an acronym for “Top Conservatives On Twitter,” and often people who identify as such will run a search on #tcot to see what people they might not follow have been saying about conservative politics. On the other side of the coin is #tlot, which refers to Top Liberals On Twitter. [/li][li]To get something to “trend” on Twitter, meaning to have it become a popular topic that hundreds of thousands or maybe even millions of people are talking about. The things that trend the most end up in a list on the left side of the screen, so someone logging in who hasn’t caught up to what’s happening in the Twitterverse can see what most people on Twitter are talking about that day. As of this posting, #tcot is trending right now, as is #TheBestThingsAboutObamasDrones, which is obviously a parody meme, so you’re bound to find some funny tweets about it.[/li][li]To get more text into a tweet because with spaces between the words they’d go over the 140-character limit. [/li][li]To highlight a word since Twitter doesn’t allow bold or italics, and hashtagged words are in color and underlined (because they turn into links).[/li][/ul] > If you’re into liberal politics and you want to follow me, send me a DM here and I’ll give you my twitter handle. > > Hope this was helpful. I think this was very helpful. It was also disturbing (you follow 2000 and 1900 follow you? What do you get done during the day?) Seriously, here is one question I have with something you wrote that I’m not clear on. You mention the use of a “.” (period) in front of the “@” to make sure that people following you and me see it, as well as people following me and not you, and people following you and not me, correct? So, in other words, that tweet will go to the combined set of users that follow you, me, and both of us, correct? Since I haven’t used twitter and don’t know the protocol as of yet, wouldn’t this be the way one would send out most tweets, thereby being the default tweet format? If the idea is to gain as many followers as possible, (and perhaps that isn’t the idea, but it would seem to me that in your case of political tweets, you would want the widest audience), you would type “.@ witty tweet”, correct? That way, folks that follow your target of the tweet but don’t follow you, will follow you if they happen to like what you’ve said (or tweeted). Is that correct? And if my understanding of what you said is correct, would it also be fair to assume that you would send out any message that you would like broadcast to the widest audience possible wouldmbe to use the “.@” option? One thing I DIDN’T read (and perhaps it is implied, but I didn’t see it) is this… Is it possible for me to send a private tweet between me and one other person? If I just use the “@” option, EVERYONE will see it that subscribes to BOTH. you and me, AND just me, correct? So in your example, @SFP That was funny! Love that band!, everyone that follows you, everyone that follows me AND you (which is implied, since everyone that follows me AND you obviously follows you, but NOT everyone who follows me but does not follow you sees this. I didn’t see anything that would permit me to tweet something to you that no one else can see, including my followers, your followers, or people that happen to follow both of us. So twitter is by definition not a private communication, correct? ---
**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2013, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twitter-can-someone-explain-to-me-how-this-works/649837/64 "2013-02-17T14:53:17Z")
I would like to point out that at some point in time, you will see a tweet in your feed that doesn’t appear to be from one of the people you follow. There are 2 possibilities: 1) it’s an advertisement 2) someone you follow retweeted it. Twitter isn’t very good at showing when someone retweets. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2013, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twitter-can-someone-explain-to-me-how-this-works/649837/65 "2013-02-17T15:02:53Z")
> [@Stink Fish Pot](#): > > I didn’t see anything that would permit me to tweet something to you that no one else can see, including my followers, your followers, or people that happen to follow both of us. So twitter is by definition not a private communication, correct? That’s what Direct Messages are for: [https://support.twitter.com/articles/20169555-send-and-receive-direct-messages#](https://support.twitter.com/articles/20169555-send-and-receive-direct-messages#) Be careful though - more than one celebrity has attempted to send a DM, but sent a normal tweet instead. That’s not a good idea if the tweet includes your personal mobile phone number. ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2013, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twitter-can-someone-explain-to-me-how-this-works/649837/66 "2013-02-18T03:38:52Z")
> [@Baron\_Greenback](#): > > That’s what Direct Messages are for: > > [https://support.twitter.com/articles/20169555-send-and-receive-direct-messages#](https://support.twitter.com/articles/20169555-send-and-receive-direct-messages#) > > Be careful though - more than one celebrity has attempted to send a DM, but sent a normal tweet instead. That’s not a good idea if the tweet includes your personal mobile phone number. Or the bulge in your shorts. “We may have never found out about the lewd photo of Rep. Anthony Weiner had he simply avoided a rudimentary Twitter mistake: [sending a direct message instead of a public @reply](http://mashable.com/2011/06/06/anthony-weiner-direct-message/).” :eek: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/twitter-can-someone-explain-to-me-how-this-works/649837.md?page=3)