Twitter Vocab Lesson

For those of us that can’t find the time to bury into evolving Twitter subculture, here’s a quick cheat sheet for key terms and “grammar” put together by the folks at DigiActive:

TWITTER TERMS

• Tweet: A Twitter message of up to 140 characters in length.
• Twitter Feed: A news-feed of Twitter messages by a respective user.
• Twitterer: A person who uses Twitter.
• Following: If you subscribe to another user’s Twitter feed you are “following” her messages.
• Followers: The users who decided to subscribe to your Twitter feed.
• Hashtags: If the symbol # (a “hash”) directly precedes terms in a Tweet, the term becomes a keyword (or “tag”). Hashtags are searchable and have become one of the most useful features on Twitter. They help you to put your messages in a larger context and enable other users interested in a specific topic or keyword to find all the relevant feeds.
• News Feed: A news feed is a collection of new messages. It shows new messages in chronological order. News Feeds are typically distributed through RSS (really simple syndication) and through a dedicated web page.
• Twitterverse: The realm of Tweets and Twitterers. It is comparable to the blogosphere, but in 140 characters.

HOW TO SPEAK TWITTER-ISH

Although Twitter is a relatively new platform, a series of conventions have emerged. They provide a basic structure to send messages via Twitter and enable users to explore the Twitterverse on the basis of keywords and topics.

• @ If one openly addresses or openly replies to another Twitterer one posts her username proceed by a “@”, for example: @DigiActive
• d: If one sends a private message to another Twitterer one starts a message with “d” followed by the respective username, for example: d DigiActive
• # If one wants to tag a message with a keyword one proceeds the keyword by a “#”, for example: #twitter_for_activists
• RT: Abbreviation for “re-tweet”. If one reads an interesting message by another user and wants to spread it to one‘s followers the cited message is proceeded by “RT @” and the username of the user who authored the message, for example: RT @DigiActive
• H/T: Abbreviation for “hat tip.” If one wants to credit another Twitterer for a thought or a reference the Tweet is proceeded by “H/T @” and the username of the respective user, for example: H/T @DigiActive