| Twitter Made Simple - Part 2 |
| Wednesday, 25 August 2010 16:50 | |||
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The second in our series of mini-articles about Twitter, this time we look at the ‘tweet’ itself. By now you’ll have signed up for an account online at http://www.twitter.com. Head there again now, and log in with your username and password. Once you’ve completed your ‘profile’, you’re ready for your first tweet! A tweet is simply a message of 140 characters or less, in answer to the question “What’s Happening?”. You can tweet anything you like, but bear in mind that - once sent - your tweet becomes publicly viewable information. It is of course far more likely to be seen by your ‘followers’ than anyone else, as they will automatically receive your tweets in their chosen software. Go ahead and send a tweet now! The next vital step is to structure your tweets using the ‘hash’ symbol (#). Wherever a word is immediately preceded by this # sign, it means that the message is intended to contribute to an existing conversation on that topic. For example, a tweet containing the text ‘#Office2010’ would be used to signify to other users that the message is ‘about’ Microsoft Office 2010. By using these ‘hashtags’, your tweet is no longer an inaudible whisper in the vast twittersphere, but a valid contribution to a topic that many thousands of people are actively listening to. Find out what hashtags are relevant to you by looking at other peoples tweets or searching the web! Good luck!!
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