Twitter is the hottest service that is taking the internet world by storm. Millions of users ranging from common man to celebrities to presidents are using twitter and for many users this service has become as essential as a mobile phone.
As this service is so popular there is lot of buzz that we come across through blog posts, friends, celebrity talks and etc. This buzz contains lot of words that are confusing and tough to understand for many users.
If you are one among the confused user who is interested to understand the commonly used twitter words then continue reading
Tweet
What ever message we send using twitter service is a tweet
RT ( Retweet )
A forwarded tweet is called as retweet. To explain a bit about this, let say you read a tweet of someone and you would like to forward it to all your followers then you have to retweet it. It is something similar to the fun mails that we receive from one friend and forward it to other friends. You got it right?
RT is the short form of retweet
Example:
RT @Microsoft Windows 7 released to RTM – that’s a cool news.
In the above tweet
- @Microsoft - is the original sender of the message
- Windows 7 released to RTM – is the tweet from @Microsoft
- that’s a cool news – is my opinion added while retweeting it.
DM ( Direct Message).
All the twitter message are visible to your followers by default. In case if you want to communicate with someone personally then you direct message them.
The direct message starts with D (not with DM) followed by the receiver and then the message.
Example:
D @MediaTemple can you help me in resetting password of my hosting account account.
Twitterverse / Twitterville / Twitosphere
These words are used to refer to twitter community just like how we use blogosphere to refer to bloggers community.
Twitterati
Someone who is very famous on twitter is often referred as Twitterati. Famous means – people with large number of followers.
Tweeple
Famous twitter users are called as Twitterati and common users are referred as Tweeple. So you and me are tweeple :)
Tweeps
Your friends on twitter
Hashtag
Tag used in messages to allow the community easily streamline a particular subject. For example if I like to contribute to ongoing discussions about bing search engine, I would tweet with a hash tag #bing as below
Bing search engine looks promising and interesting to use. #bing
And finally here is video from the popular CommonCraft that explains twitter in plain english: