Twitter for Dummies (17 page)

Government figures have to deal with privacy and legal issues that most other twitterers don’t, so politicians may occasionally seem a bit on the quiet side when tweeting.

Here are some political groups and figures to get you started:

U.S. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (
http://twitter.com/dccc
)

U.S. National Republican Congressional Committee (
http://twitter.com/nrcc
)

U.S. President Barack Obama (
http://twitter.com/barackobama
)

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (
http://twitter.com/schwarzenegger
)

The Office of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (
http://twitter.com/downingstreet
)

Former Vice President Al Gore (
http://twitter.com/algore
)

The White House (
http://twitter.com/whitehouse
)

Following Celebrities on Twitter

Many people are hearing about Twitter for the first time because they’ve seen it on entertainment news shows such as
Access Hollywood
or
The Soup.
Celebrities use Twitter, too! The celebrities who use Twitter do so for different reasons:

To connect with fans:
Bands such as Coldplay (
@coldplay
) announce tour and concert dates by using Twitter. Cyclist Lance Armstrong (
@lancearmstrong
) provides information about the race circuit and his charity efforts.

To get personal:
Basketball star Shaquille O’Neal (
@THE_REAL_SHAQ
) and celebrity couple Ashton Kutcher (
@aplusk
) and Demi Moore (
@mrskutcher
) use Twitter to offer an intimate — and often irreverent — glimpse into their lives.

To share interests:
Rapper MC Hammer (
@MCHammer
), who founded a Web video startup called DanceJam.com, uses his Twitter stream to help promote new artists, share his favorite music, and offer lively thoughts on the state of the industry.

To be real:
Singers Miley Cyrus (
@mileycyrus
) and Sara Bareilles (
@SaraBareilles
) tweet just like the rest of us — gushing in excitement over successes, complaining over tired feet and other mundane life moments that make theirs seem a whole lot more “real.”

In many ways, Twitter functions as a sort of impromptu fan club for tech-savvy celebs both renowned and up-and-coming. In the weeks leading up to publication, Oprah Winfrey (
@Oprah
) and other world renowned household brands have started to sign up. Rumor has it that 1.5 million new people reached Twitter.com in the weekend after Ashton Kutcher appeared on her show and Oprah started to tweet.

Here are a few more Twitter accounts you may want to take a peek at:

Jimmy Fallon (
http://twitter.com/jimmyfallon
)

Tina Fey (
http://twitter.com/TinaFey
)

Rainn Wilson (
http://twitter.com/rainnwilson
)

50 Cent (
http://twitter.com/50cent
)

John Mayer (
http://twitter.com/johncmayer
)

Jimmy Eat World (
http://twitter.com/jimmyeatworld
)

Wil Wheaton (
http://twitter.com/wilw
)

Soleil Moon Frye (
http://twitter.com/moonfrye
)

John Cleese (
http://twitter.com/JohnCleese
)

People do start Twitter accounts using celebrities’ names, and they often get a whole slew of followers who have no idea that they’re not following the “real” celebrity — the person they think they’re following. Impersonating someone on Twitter violates Twitter’s Terms of Service, and Twitter has shut down accounts by impersonators. You can usually tell whether the person is legit by looking at the number of followers — if he has a large number of followers, the chances are good that he’s for real, but even that isn’t a guarantee. Of course, you may not care if the person is the real celebrity if you actually enjoy the person’s tweets!

Signing Up for Syndicated Material

Plenty of Twitter accounts syndicate material from all kinds of online non-Twitter outlets: event listings, blogs, newspapers’ Web sites, and so on. These accounts fall into a sort of gray area on Twitter: Most of them are quite welcome in the site’s community, and, in the case of news outlets such as
The
New York Times
(
@nytimes
) and CNN (
@cnnbrk
), make up some of Twitter’s most-followed accounts.

Cable news outlet CNN has nailed it when it comes to using Twitter for more than just headline syndication, letting Twitter really enhance its broadcasts. Their newscasters not only use Twitter accounts to both interact with viewers and relay breaking news stories, but anchor Rick Sanchez (
@CNNRickSanchez
) fields questions from Twitter followers in real time on his on-air program,
Rick Sanchez Direct.
Interestingly, though, CNN’s most followed account,
@CNNBrk
, was developed by a fan, James Cox (
@imajes
) who later worked cooperatively with CNN and eventually sold it to them for an undisclosed amount.

Here are some news and media Twitter accounts you can check out:

BBC (
http://twitter.com/bbc
)

Harpers (
http://twitter.com/harpers
)

Marvel Entertainment (
http://twitter.com/marvel
)

The New Yorker (
http://twitter.com/newyorkerdotcom
)

NPR (
http://twitter.com/nprnews
)

Wired News (
http://twitter.com/wired
)

Tweeting in Unison

Sometimes, users or organizations create a Twitter account so that the community can feed it with updates. These community-created Twitter accounts can be automated (through the use of a script or bot) or moderated. But either way, these co-authored accounts gather the content from many Twitter users, sometimes anonymously. This aggregated stream of tweets can incorporate anything from stories to poems to confessionals, and the rest of the Twitter community can subscribe and follow the results.

One of the first of these community Twitter accounts was 140Story (
@140story
), tiny stories told in 140 characters. Other Twitter accounts have popped up that aggregate tweets into short stories, like a giant Mad-Lib.

But no list of community Twitter accounts would be complete without SecretTweet (
@secrettwe
et). Similar to the popular Web site PostSecret (
@postsecret
), SecretTweet gives Twitter users a place to share their deepest, darkest secrets on Twitter’s public timeline without divulging their identities. Twitter users can get something off their chests and read the secrets of others. SecretTweet has been called everything from addicting to brilliant to sad.

Small Business, Big Community: NYC’s @shakeshack

Small businesses wanting to use Twitter to build loyalty, take note. Here’s what Jason Schwartz (
@jschwa
), the gentleman who implemented the
@shakeshack
bot (see figure), has to say about the Twitter community built by twittering fans of the Shake Shack, one of New York City’s most social eateries.

The heart of Silicon Alley is designated by the ShakeShack, a burger joint in Madison Square Park. Lunchtime lines stretch around the Manhattan refuge for the fabled burgers and shakes. It is the favorite meeting place of NY-based tech startups to discuss business, social media, and how to push the medium forward.

To facilitate tweetups (impromptu meetings facilitated by Twitter), the
@shakeshack
bot was created. This is how it works:

1. Someone (say, me,
@jschwa
) decides to head to the ShakeShack and tweets

@shakeshack
I’m in line, come join me for lunch

2. The
@shakeshack
bot then automatically retweets this message, saying:

Via
@jschwa
I’m in line, come join me for lunch

3. People who follow
@shakeshack
see the tweet and join their colleague, who is likely close to ordering by the time they arrive.

The
@shakeshack
bot is regularly used to report the length of the line, organize snow ball fights, and as part of the networking fabric of Silicon Alley (a nickname given to the area of Manhattan where a concentrated number of tech startups are located).

Hundreds, if not thousands of NYC area twitterers are now more aware of the Shake Shack, and it’s become a must-visit for Twitter enthusiasts when in NYC for meetings or pleasure.

For the curious and technically-inclined, the code for the
@shakeshack
bot
can be found here:
http://smr.absono.us/2008/04/anatomy-of-a-twitter-bot
.

Part III

Twittering in High Gear

In This Part . . .

If you’re reading this part, you’ve probably already established a bit of a presence on Twitter and have some friends and followers. In this part, we kick it up a notch.

We go over the tools and tricks that can make your Twitter experience more efficient, more rewarding, and more accessible for you, such as third-party applications and mobile updating.

Chapter 7

Tricks of the Twitter Gurus

In This Chapter

Minding your Twitter manners

Adding links to your Twitter updates

Exploring your Twitter activity

Tweeting like a pro with shorthand codes

The more you use Twitter, the more you’ll notice how complex the potential uses of this deceptively simple service have become. Celebrities, companies, and all sorts of everyday Twitter users are discovering their voices on Twitter, creating a whole new culture in the process. Yet at the same time, each twitterer has a slightly different way of using Twitter.

In this chapter, we provide an overview of protocol, etiquette, and culture that have developed on Twitter. This chapter can help you figure out what tends to be more effective and what tends to not go over well on Twitter, plus ways to be efficient. Keep in mind, though, you’re going to come up with your own rules and standards while you tweet.

Following Twitter Protocol

Many Twitter neophytes want to know what the rules are or whether Twitter has standard protocol and etiquette. Like many other social media sites, Twitter sprang from a close-knit group of early adopters who set the rhythm. Because Twitter was a favorite of Silicon Valley’s new-media elite long before it broke into the mainstream, some insider jokes and conventions used can be confusing. Longtime users have certainly fallen into certain habits or sets of rules. But now that Twitter has become so popular and diverse, you can find plenty of wiggle room to do your own thing.

Like any other social-media company, Twitter has a Terms of Service (TOS) agreement that all members must adhere to or risk having their accounts suspended or deleted. You can access Twitter’s terms at
http://twitter.com/terms
. You won’t find anything particularly surprising in them: You must be at least 13 years old to create an account and use the service, you can’t engage in abuse or harassment, you can’t spam other members or participate in activities that break any laws, and so on. The terms are actually more liberal than most Web services’ regulations; pornography and explicit language, for example, aren’t banned.

Beyond the terms of service, Twitter etiquette is simple: Be genuine and nondeceptive and provide value. Other than that, just use Twitter how it suits you. This is primarily an unofficial protocol, but do keep in mind that Twitter keeps tabs on “deceptive” activity, too: Twitter can ban accounts that impersonate celebrities or companies if those accounts don’t make it clear that they’re unofficial or parodies. This policy is a contentious point in the Twitter community: Many members were upset when the
@cwalken
account, belonging to an aspiring comedian pretending to be actor Christopher Walken, was deleted from the system.

Beyond the simple regulations, you can’t really use Twitter in a right or wrong way because no two people use it for exactly the same reasons. But some members certainly have their opinions:

Some users complain when others tweet too often, whereas others complain that their contacts don’t tweet enough. (This complaint is a little silly. Don’t like the contents? Turn the dial. Unsubscribe.)

Some users take issue with strings of @replies and wonder why those conversations weren’t conducted in a private forum.

You may encounter confusing, even conflicting, advice and back-seat tweeting from the handful of people on Twitter who aren’t comfortable without rules. Don’t take them too seriously; Twitter just isn’t that rigid.

Be polite on Twitter, for the most part, but no more or less so than you’re expected to be in the real world — just keep in mind that Twitter is a public forum. Twitter posts and feeds get exported outside of Twitter and onto Twitter-based Web sites, blogs, social-media sites such as Facebook, and aggregators such as FriendFeed. If you know you plan to, say, sync up your Twitter account with your Facebook account so that your tweets appear as your Facebook status message, keep in mind that you’re branching out beyond the Twitter community and culture.

Although users love Twitter’s largely rule-free nature, some generally accepted behaviors have evolved over time. You can ease your transition into the culture of Twitter by getting familiar with these behaviors before you first start out. Establish dedication and credibility early on, in part, by knowing your way around the following Twitter customs.

Language and abbreviations

Over time, any group of people that interacts regularly falls into its own “vernacular” way of talking. Twitter is no exception to that rule; in fact, it may be even more subject to it because of the 140-character limit. Twitter’s lexicon has evolved over time to include unique words, phrases, and abbreviations that most regular users understand and recognize. But new users often find these references confusing.

Right off the bat, you see a lot of puns involving the word “Twitter,” with the prefixes tw- or twi- added to the front: tweet, tweeple, tweetup, and so on. At first, it looks like baby talk — and indeed, it can get a bit over-the-top. Not all members are fans of corny terms such as tweeple. Others think the Twitter-specific language is fun, or an easy and obvious way to delineate something as Twitter-specific. Either way, whether you plan to use goofy Twitter-speak or not, it does help to know what this stuff means.

Many application and Web site names have adopted Twitter-speak words for products and services associated with Twitter or which tap into Twitter’s application programming interface (API) to use Twitter data. For example, the word
twinfluence
was used casually to describe (no shock here) the kind of social influence that individual Twitter users had within the Twitter community. Eventually, the slang term was used to name twInfluence (
www.twinfluence.com
), an application that gets its data from Twitter and turns it into a report that estimates Twitter users’ power and influence.

Plenty of eccentric people use Twitter, not to mention loads of subcultures and sub-communities. Just because you see an unfamiliar term doesn’t mean it’s part of the Twitter vernacular. For Twitter terms you should be familiar with, check out the glossary at the back of this book.

We purposely didn’t include in this glossary some of the nonsense words that begin with the tw- prefix. Twitterers don’t widely use them, many avid users actually find them rather annoying, and beginning to use them more often may be the first sign that you’re a twitterholic! (For more on these tw- terms, see Chapter 7.)

Engaging others on Twitter

On Twitter, the name of the game is engagement. Whether you use Twitter for business or fun, you don’t just want to sit back and watch the stream flow by — you want to genuinely interact with people. You have to know how to listen as much as know how to converse (this goes twice for businesses) — but it always boils down to engagement.

First and foremost, do not be shy about finding people who share your interests, even if you don’t know them (yet). Use
http://search.twitter.com
to look for some of the most obscure keywords related to your work, hobbies, or passions. Then click through to the profiles of the people who wrote the tweets you find. You’ll be amazed how good an idea you get of someone just by glancing at their last 20 tweets. Interested? Follow them. It’s not like other social networks where you’re really only expected to connect to folks you already know.

A great way to engage others on Twitter is to turn on the Show All @Replies option in your settings. If you have this option turned off, your Twitter feed doesn’t display @replies directed to people who aren’t in your network. If you turn this option on, you can see the whole conversation. The more tweets to other people you see, the more chances you have to “meet” new people, jump in, and engage.

While you sift through the Twitter conversation, don’t be shy about clicking the usernames that you see (as in @replies) and writing to strangers offering your own opinion. It may take a few tries with a few different conversations before the chatting users include you in their conversation, but eventually they do.

But even if you don’t @reply, your tweets still appear in search, and other Twitter users can spot them. If you have something interesting to say, people start to reply to your tweets. If you seek out and use relevant keywords and #hashtags, you will start to connect with others who share your interests. Your early days on Twitter will probably be pretty quiet when it comes to replies and conversation. All those twitterers are just getting to know you, after all. Don’t worry; after a few of your tweets appear in the timeline and you add a few contacts to your network, people will begin to notice you.

Tweeting frequency

Twitter users tend to settle into a rhythm of tweeting frequency, often unconsciously, over time. Some Twitter users are considered noisy because they tweet so much, whereas others can come across as standoffish because they don’t tweet frequently. So, how much is too much or too little? How often should you tweet?

A good rule when you’re starting out is to post at least four or five tweets per day. You most likely find yourself tweeting much more often than that, but if you aren’t yet fully comfortable with it, use that number to get started.

If you’re using Twitter for your business, or you plan to link to your products or posts on your personal blog, find a balance between the number of tweets that promote yourself and the number of tweets that provide value. You might think of this balance as an actual ratio. For example, for every link of your own that you place on Twitter, send out at least five tweets that inform, engage, and converse. If conversation and engagement are your aim, you definitely want to keep a human voice in your Twitter stream at all times.

It’s worth thinking about who you want to reach. People new to Twitter and only following a few get bowled over by frequent tweeters simply because it’s all they see on their stream. A roaring chat with friends you already know is a fine use of Twitter, too, and would involve
many
more tweets a day than, say, a business user or someone just figuring out what they want to do with the platform.