What is Twitter

Very simply Twitter is a micro blog. You have probably all come across the concept of “blogging” whereby you share your views thoughts and opinions with others on the internet

Twitter allows you to do the same thing but in a micro form by restricting you to 140 characters for each “Tweet”. Therefore you have to be much more succinct and to the point with each “Tweet” you write.

Tweets can range from the very mundane such as “I have just washed the car” or “I am watching Eastenders” to commenting on the current issues of the day - such as your thoughts on the Government’s latest policies, the debate on the environment or how to tackle the world financial crisis.

How to get started

Go to www.twitter.com

It is very straight forward to create an account. You will need a user name (you don’t have to use your real name), an email address and a password

If you don’t want to use your personal email address, you can easily create a new one by going to hotmail, yahoo, msn or live. Just type into google any of these terms.

By clicking onto the “settings” button you can then personalise your page by changing the colour scheme, background view and add a photograph to make your page more memorable.

You can then start to “follow” other peoples tweets. These can be people you know, famous personalities, politicians or organisations. Stephen Fry is someone who was thousands of people “following” him.

You can do this in 2 ways

• use the search box on the twitter site
• or use google to find the twitter page you need

Be careful as some of the twitter pages can be confusing and may not necessarily be the actual person you are looking for. Check them out on google to make sure.

Sending Tweets

This is easy if you just want to post a general comment. Enter your comments in the box at the top of the page and press send remembering to keep within the 140 character restriction.

If you want to send your tweet to a particular person or company you will need their twitter site name. You then put the @ sign before this and enter your message. For instance Chris Evans the tv and radio personality

@achrisevans

I really like your show Chris - much better than Terry!

Re-Tweets

Re-tweeting is how Twitter users share interesting tweets from the people they are following. They copy and paste the original tweet and send it out. To give credit to the original person, users usually put “RT” plus the originator’s username at the beginning of the tweet. Here’s an example:

- The Twitter user @benparr tweets: I just heard that Apple is releasing new iPods in July!

- You retweet by posting RT @benparr I just heard that Apple is releasing new iPods in July!

Click the Icon Above to Follow Dating At 50 Plus on Twitter