Desperatly trying to catch up - Ive just joined twitter and oh my am I confused! Whats all these hash-taggie things!!! Ill work it out Im sure, but I currently just dont understand!
Twitter can be a confusing place. I'll try and give a short sum-up to make it less confusing.
@ replies: if you put "@whatever" in a twitter message then the person with the username "whatever" will be notified that they were mentioned.
Retweets: If you agree with someone's message, or disagree and want people you follow to see it, you can retweet it. There are two forms of this. In one, their whole post (complete with their picture) appears in your timeline. In the other, you send a message that contains the text of their message. So, if @whatever had said "Health libraries are fantastic", you can send a message that says "RT @whatever: health libraries are fantastic", and everyone will know that @whatever said that. If you're really ambitious, you can put your own message in front of that.
Hashtags. Sometimes, people on Twitter will talk about a subject they think is important, and want other people talking about the same subject to be able to see it. So, if you were watching the olympics and wanted to talk to other people about it, you might say "Watching the #olympics, hope Jessica Ennis wins her event!". Some people read Twitter by browing through the hashtags, so someone looking for people's messages about the olympics would search for #olympics and see all the messages containing that word. Twitter keep track of the hashtags that are most popular at any given point and list these on their front page as "trending topics", so you can click on one of those and instantly see what 1000 people you don't know think of the Olympics. Despite how I made this sound, this can actually be fun.
And that's about all there is to it. You will follow people, people will follow you. Some of these people will be very sweary, some will be very funny.
I think of the hashtags as being a bit like cataloguing (though I'm not a cataloguer!) - they give a consistent subject heading so you can find all the tweets talking about the same time/subject/event rather than relying on "freetext" searching.
Ohh, thank you both! I think i struggled because I kind-of thought of hashtages like they were other people, like when using facebook, the page might be able a 'thing' rather than a person, but there is still a real life person incharge of that wall...thinking of hashtags in the same way got me very confused! Im going to give it a go I think!! Thank you!
Twitter can be a confusing place. I'll try and give a short sum-up to make it less confusing.
ReplyDelete@ replies: if you put "@whatever" in a twitter message then the person with the username "whatever" will be notified that they were mentioned.
Retweets: If you agree with someone's message, or disagree and want people you follow to see it, you can retweet it. There are two forms of this. In one, their whole post (complete with their picture) appears in your timeline. In the other, you send a message that contains the text of their message. So, if @whatever had said "Health libraries are fantastic", you can send a message that says "RT @whatever: health libraries are fantastic", and everyone will know that @whatever said that. If you're really ambitious, you can put your own message in front of that.
Hashtags. Sometimes, people on Twitter will talk about a subject they think is important, and want other people talking about the same subject to be able to see it. So, if you were watching the olympics and wanted to talk to other people about it, you might say "Watching the #olympics, hope Jessica Ennis wins her event!". Some people read Twitter by browing through the hashtags, so someone looking for people's messages about the olympics would search for #olympics and see all the messages containing that word. Twitter keep track of the hashtags that are most popular at any given point and list these on their front page as "trending topics", so you can click on one of those and instantly see what 1000 people you don't know think of the Olympics. Despite how I made this sound, this can actually be fun.
And that's about all there is to it. You will follow people, people will follow you. Some of these people will be very sweary, some will be very funny.
I think of the hashtags as being a bit like cataloguing (though I'm not a cataloguer!) - they give a consistent subject heading so you can find all the tweets talking about the same time/subject/event rather than relying on "freetext" searching.
ReplyDeleteOhh, thank you both! I think i struggled because I kind-of thought of hashtages like they were other people, like when using facebook, the page might be able a 'thing' rather than a person, but there is still a real life person incharge of that wall...thinking of hashtags in the same way got me very confused!
ReplyDeleteIm going to give it a go I think!! Thank you!