Twitter 101+

101+

Ryan McCormack
http://bitstrategist.com

January 3, 2010

Ryan McCormack :: January 2010 :: http://bitstrategist.com 1

What you’ll ﬁnd here…

•  An overview of the service
•  How messages work
•  Who can see your messages
•  The basic tools you use with Twitter
•  A few simple tips


What you won’t ﬁnd here…

•  Detailed usage guidelines
•  Twitter inﬂuence, analytics, ROI, …
•  Strategy for businesses and Twitter
•  Why Twitter is important


Outline

•  Overview: What is Twitter
•  Messages
•  Sharing
•  140 Characters
•  Twitter Myths
•  Tools for Tweets
•  Five tips


What is Twitter


Twitter is about sharing messages


A deﬁnition

Twitter is an online service that allows
you to share 140-character messages


The basics: Reading messages

•  You choose people whose messages you
want to be able to read, and you “follow”
them

•  Their messages (or “tweets”) show up in your
“stream”


The basics: Reading messages

Stream of
“Tweets”


The basics: What is a stream?

•  A collection of messages you can view (aka
“timeline”)

•  Your follower stream has messages from the
people you follow, sorted in reverse
chronological order

•  Any set of logically grouped messages (e.g., by
user) can be a stream


Streams (cont’d)
Newer
messages

The stream never stops
Time
ﬂowing…but that’s ok

Older
messages


Streams (cont’d)
What you see: The most
recent stuﬀ

The entire
stream


The basics: Sending messages

•  You can write short messages and the people
who “follow” you can read them (if they’re
public, everyone can)

•  Whoever reads your messages can also share
them with whoever follows them


The basics: Sending messages


The basics: Tools

•  You use a “client” to send and read messages

•  Example: twitter.com web site

•  Additional clients exist on the web, desktop,
and all mobile devices


Seems simple…what’s the fuss?


Before we begin…


Twitter is the Wild West of technology


Twitter provides the building blocks

•  140 character messages

•  How “following” works

•  Favorites, Lists, (Twitter) Retweet

•  Privacy, blocking and spam reporting


The crowd makes up the rest

•  Twitter speciﬁes nothing about syntax
beyond d as the ﬁrst “word” of a direct
message

•  The community has evolved its own
microsyntax, etiquette, and conventions,
much of which Twitter has adopted

•  Things are still evolving!!!


Messages
The social objects that are shared on Twitter


Messages can be anything
Articles
Blogs
Web
Having Deep
News
sites
Maintaining
Thoughts
Video
Events
“presence”
Sharing
Images
Information

Social Good
What’s
Self-promotion
Happening?
Sharing
Politics
Opinions
Promoting
Events
Others
News
Being
Connecting
Funny
with people
People


Messages can be anything
Articles
Blogs
Web
Having Deep
News
sites
Maintaining
Thoughts
Video
Events
“presence”
Sharing
Images
Information

Social Good
What’s
Self-promotion
Happening?
Sharing
Politics
Opinions
Promoting
Events
Others
News
Being
Connecting
Funny
With people
People


A few sample tweets

Source: http://bit.ly/8PKCKw


Sharing images and video

•  Many services exist for sharing multimedia

•  Media are often seen with messages (like
email attachments)

•  Twitter account usually linked


Example: Image sharing

Link shows image in client

Take a photo
Use mobile
Message shows
with your
client to
up on Twitter
phone
create and
with link
post a
to image
message

Image lives on
Twitpic web site


Twitter has a shibboleth (more later)


From the Wild I


From the Wild II


How messaging works


Twitter sends your message for you
THE MESSAGE
“Apple to sell
Android iPhones!
http://bit.ly/34a4al”
THE MESSENGER
@twitter

THE RECIPIENTS
The people who can
see your message (but
may not)

THE SENDER
@mashable
(aka Pete Cashmore)


Recipients can be many or one

BROADCAST MESSAGE (“TWEET”)
DIRECT MESSAGES (DM)
Messages you want many to see
Messages you want ONE to see

“I found a gr8
“Fantastic article: 20 Food Halloween costume
Rules from Michael Pollan for Bingo!!! Lolz…See
http://bit.ly/mcTCj ”
you tonight”


So, who sees your tweets?
YOUR FOLLOWERS
EVERYONE ELSE
People interested in what you share
People who ﬁnd what you’ve shared (if allowed)

Retweets

Public timeline

Search


Reply to a message (“@ replies”)
Conversational response to a @mashable Ha! The
message, attribution provided day Apple does that
with @username
I’ll eat my shoe

“Apple to sell
Android iPhones!

@mashable Have
zombies taken over at
Apple, and Jobs is
under mind control?
@mashable No way!
I can’t believe it!


“Retweet” a message (RT)

•  Twitter slang for repeating a message from
someone else

•  Example of the power of network eﬀects in
many-to-many communications

•  One metric used to measure inﬂuence


Retweets can cause chain reactions

•  Network eﬀects can amplify your message

•  Example
•  I have 10 followers
•  I send a message and they all see it
•  1 of my followers retweets my message
•  Their followers see my original message, and some of them
retweet it
•  And so on, and so on….


The parable of the chessboard

•  One penny per square
27 squares = ~$1.34 million
•  Double on every subsequent
square

•  How many squares before
there is more than $1 million
on the board?


Sample network eﬀect:
3RTs = ~250,000 possible views
He must be joking: RT
RT @mashable
@mashable Apple to sell
Apple to sell
Android iPhones!
Android iPhones!
http://bit.ly/34a4al
@hirshberg
1337 followers
@seanpercival
7763 followers

Crazy news about
@Alyssa_Milano
Android phones
236,575 followers
(via @mashable)


Anatomy of a Retweet

He must be joking: RT
@mashable Apple to sell
Android iPhones!

He must be joking: Comment about the message (optional)

RT: An indication that this is a retweet

@mashable: The person who wrote the original message

Apple to sell…: The actual message (possibly edited for length)


The “Twitter” Retweet

•  Appears as a message in your stream

•  Does not contain RT or @

•  Has no comments or additions


Sharing
People and the social aspect of Twitter


So who uses Twitter, anyway?

•  Twitter is a huge community

•  20-40 million unique visitors per month to
twitter.com

•  20-50 Million messages / day (roughly 4
billion tweets in 2009)


More visitors than NYTimes.com

Twitter growth has
been phenomenal*

* But it may be ﬂattening…


Twitter is used by “everyone”


People “follow” others and are followed

Your
People
“Followers”
you follow

Your Twitter
“friends”


People can protect their privacy


People are identiﬁed using a handle and an @

Link using @

@mashable is a
“handle” on Twitter
(like an email address)

Proﬁle page
information


Follow “valuable” people…that’s the point

•  Friends and family

•  Colleagues, competitors, professionals

•  Celebrities, authors, educators

•  People who are funny, insightful, inspiring

•  Anyone who’s interesting!!


Use Twitter “lists” to ﬁnd interesting people


Twitter lists (cont’d)

•  Lists are “curated collections” of people on
Twitter

•  You can create them or follow lists created by
others

•  Use tools like Listorious (.com) to ﬁnd lists by
category, tag, popularity etc.


So who’s got the most followers?

Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk): 4.0+ million followers


Unfollow / block time wasters

•  Bots, spammers and snake-oil salesmen

•  People with whom you wouldn’t have a beer


Meformers (80%) vs. Informers (20%)

Source: http://bit.ly/1X18c1
3000 tweets, 350 Twitter users


140 characters
Short messages can pack a punch, but there are some tricks


Diﬀerent messages for diﬀerent mediums

Fortune Cookie
Telegram
Magazine article
Book
10-20 words
10-100 words
250-1000 words
50,000+ words

140 characters = ~25-35 words


Length isn’t everything
“That’s one small step for man, one
giant leap for mankind” (57 characters)


Why 140 characters??

Compatibility for mobile-device text messaging (SMS)


Twitter lingo and tools shorten messages

•  URL shorteners (e.g., bit.ly)

•  RT = Retweet, DM = Direct message

•  @username for people


Lingo and tools shorten messages (cont’d)

•  Abbreviations (e.g., omg, ftw, btw, fyi, lol)

•  “Hashtags” to support search (e.g., #design)

•  Attribution shortcuts (by for authors, via for
sources, symbols like ^ for “cotweets”)


Twitter Myths


Myth 1: People only talk about what they ate for lunch


Myth 1: People only talk about what they ate for lunch

•  Possibly true, but…

•  If someone you follow talks about things you
don’t like, don’t follow them

•  For friends at a distance, this kind of presence
can be fun


Myth 2: It’s a ﬂood…I can’t read it all


Myth 2: It’s a ﬂood…I can’t read it all

•  Twitter messages aren’t necessarily critical

•  It doesn’t matter if you see everything

•  In most cases, you won’t….


Myth 3: Twitter is for teenagers


Myth 3: Twitter is for teenagers

•  Actually, many teenagers don’t like or use
Twitter all that much

•  Twitter hits a broad demographic; it’s not
focused in any one age, economic, or
geographic group


Myth 4: Everyone can see what I say


Myth 4: Everyone can see what I say

•  If you want the world to see your tweets, you
can, but…

•  Twitter has privacy settings where you can
protect your tweets


Myth 5: You can really make a fool of yourself

Actually, this is true…


Tools for Tweets


Lots of ways to access Twitter

“Apple to sell
Android iPhones!

RSS

Web

Mobile
Desktop
(Apps and SMS)


Brizzly
Web-based clients

Seesmic
Twitter.com


Mobile clients

Tweetie
Twidroid

Twitteriﬁc
OpenBeak
(Twitterberry)


Desktop clients

Seesmic

Tweetdeck


Helper web sites

Twitter search

Oneforty: For tools+apps

Listorious: For lists

Strategies and etiquette


There’s no “right” way, but…

•  Tons of people will tell you how you “should”
use Twitter

•  How you use it depends on your goals

•  Don’t use it if you don’t get anything out of it!


1. Silence is golden…


1. Silence is golden…

•  Don’t break it unless you think you can
improve upon it

•  Think about your audience and what they get
out of what you say


2. Minimize self
promotion

Maximize “good”
promotion

2. Minimize self promotion

•  It’s ok, but do it sparingly:
•  New blog posts
•  Awards or accomplishments
•  Cool stuﬀ you did (e.g., projects)

•  If you’re just using Twitter personally, brag all
you want


2. Maximize “good” promotion

•  Good is relative; think of your audience

•  Tweet about interesting articles, design, images,
video that somehow “ﬁt” your Twitter persona

•  Retweet good stuﬀ from others

•  Recommend people worth following (e.g., on
#followfriday or through lists)


3. Don’t just be a parrot


3. Don’t just be a parrot

•  Plenty of people on Twitter just repeat what
others say (through retweeting or quoting)

•  There are more than enough of these people

•  Add value


4. Give credit where credit is due


4. Give credit where credit is due

•  People share a lot of great ideas

•  If you pass them along, let people know
where they came from!


5. For followers: Quality, not quantity


Summary


What is Twitter

An online service that allows you to
share 140-character messages


Twitter 101+

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