You might find Twitter a bit overwhelming if you’ve never used it before. The conversations are short and people using it speak a strange language. And, there’s a lot of Twitter terminology you might not be aware of. Here are a few terms you’ll need to familiarize yourself with that will help reduce the new Twitter user’s anxiety.
Twitter Handle: That’s your Twitter username. For example, President Obama’s Twitter handle is @BarackObama.
Tweet: A “Tweet” is the actual message that you send out to your followers through Twitter. A tweet can include an image and URL but a tweet always has to remain within its 140 character limit.
Retweet: Social media is about sharing. If another user sees and likes your latest tweet, they can choose to “retweet” it. That means they just shared what you just tweeted with their followers. Don’t worry; they aren’t stealing your material. By retweeting, the user has given you credit for the information and your Twitter Handle will show up on their retweet.
Feed: On your twitter home page you’ll see this constantly updating list of tweets of people who you follow. That is your “Feed”. So if you do a hashtag or profile search, a new feed will show up with tweets pertaining to your specific search terms.
Hashtag: It’s pretty much a word with the pound sign (#) in front of it. For example, let’s say I tweet, “I have an extra ticket to the Los Angeles #Lakers game tonight”. By using #Lakers I just made my tweet easier to find for anyone looking for updates under the search term: #Lakers.
For more tips on how to reduce the new Twitter user’s anxiety, check out this short video.