A small tutorial for Twitter newbies

[Ashwin]

Twitter is a very popular social network, aka Micro-blogging site.

It has some similarities to Facebook. Although it has a better privacy policy

Let's get started:

Visit the Twitter homepage:

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To signup for a new account on twitter:

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or just click on the "Sign up" button

Use a valid email address, a strong password. Verify the account by clicking on the link sent to your email. Now you can start using twitter.

Tweeting:

You can enter your status or anything you want to share with the world in the text-box that you see. Posts that you make on twitter are called "tweets"

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There is a limit for 140 characters per tweet, so u may wanna cut down on the punctuation, spaces, grammar. (basically everything u learn't in English class)

The Tweets of those you follow will appear on your page, aka as Timeline.

You can follow/unfollow any twitter user you like. Celebs, news anchors, bloggers (even me, LOL )


Privacy:

You can alter settings for privacy to Public/private.

When you set your status to private, only users who follow you would be able to read your tweets. Also, you will have to approve new followers.

Re-tweeting:

If you like a tweet and would like to share it with your followers, you can use the re-tweet option.
Just click on Retweet button and select retweet again on the pop-up to confirm.

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Your followers will now see the tweet as "Retweeted by you"

Re-tweeting blog posts:
If you know the blog/blogger's twitter account, you can use the above method to retweet their tweets.

Another way is to open the web-page and look for a share button. it varies for many websites, the most common symbol is the "t" as shown in the screen-shot.


http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/8...ostretweet.png



Assuming you are already logged into twitter, click on it and select share/tweet.


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It will be posted to your timeline.



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Tweet status:

You will notice a time is displayed below each tweet. hover the mouse over it and left-click on it.
You will be taken to a new page, that is the "Status" or URL of the particular tweet.


For more help resources on using twitter, visit:

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Hope this helps happy tweeting.

PS: A few safety tips for Tweeps

1. Don't unfollow many users at a time.
2. Don't click on shortened URLs blindly, even if they are from a trusted source. they could be malicious
3. Many spammers post auto-tweets, follow people randomly and send them Direct messages. Use caution if you see anything suspicious