Everything twitter
From Novice To Expert
THE UNOFFICIAL GUIDE
TO EVERYTHING TWITTER
THE BLUE BOOK
First Edition / 2009
Compiled by Steve Soho & Monica Jones
P u b l i s h e d b y
S o H o B o o k s
This ebook edition is a text-only edition.
The paperback print edition with many photos
is available at www.amazon.com
in a Full Color edition,
and a Black & White edition.
Published and released under the Creative Commons licence:
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0
ISBN 978-1441419729
© 2009 SoHo Books
Made in the USA
twitter and the twitter logo are trademarks of twitter, inc .
SoHo Books is not affiliated with twitter, inc.
twontent (content)
1. Twintroduction
2. Getting Started
3. News on twitter
4. How to get (more) Followers
5. Top 345 Twollower
6. Step twitter Starter Program
7. A River of Uselessfulness
8. Awesome Ranking Sites
9. The 50 Most Popular twitter Users
10. #followfriday
11. The Official twitter Text Commands
12. More Functions and Options
13. Search Options and Making New Friends
14. twitter Twictionary
15. Great twitter Apps & Sites
16. twitter for Mobile Devices
17. Design and Graphics
18. How to add twitter to your website
19. Credits & Credentials
1.
TWINTRODUCTION
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them. Users can send and receive tweets via the twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free to use over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees.
Twitter was founded in San Francisco in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. The four were participants in an R&D project with Odeo, a podcasting company. In October of 2006 the company was purchased by the senior management and the company Obvious was started by former Odeo employees to operate Odeo and twitter. Twitter rapidly gained popularity, and in April 2007 Obvious spun the company off into twitter, Inc. Since then the question has been how twitter will make money. Founder Evan Williams is “encouraged” by the fact that there is a lot of commercial use of the service already, some of which they may be able to charge for. He stated that they haven’t really figured out how to monetize twitter yet, but the service won’t die because there is no immediate way to monetize.
Twitter has gained extensive notability and popularity worldwide. It is often described as the "SMS of Internet," in that the site provides the functionality (via its application programming interfaces) for other desktop and web-based applications to send and receive short text messages, often obscuring the twitter service itself. Four gateway numbers are currently available for SMS ― short codes for the United States, Canada, India, and an Isle of Man-based number for international use. There is also a short code for Vodafone users from the United Kingdom. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via e-mail.
Estimates of the number of daily users vary as the company does not release the number of active accounts. In November 2008, Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research estimated that twitter had 4-5 million users. A February 2009 compete.com blog entry ranks twitter as the third most used social network (Facebook being the largest, followed by MySpace), which puts the number of unique monthly visitors at roughly 6 million and the number of monthly visits at 55 million. In March 2009, a Nielsen.com blog ranked twitter as the fastest growing site in the Member Communities category for February 2009. Twitter had a growth of 1382%, Zimbio had a growth of 240%, followed by facebook with a growth of 228%.
reception
Twitter began experiencing problems related to its growing number of users in 2007. The service has experienced occasionally outages resulting from traffic overloads due to its increased popularity.
The Wall Street Journal wrote, "These social-networking services elicit mixed feelings in the technology-savvy people who have been their early adopters. Fans say twitter is a good way to keep in touch with busy friends. But, some users are starting to feel too connected, as they grapple with check-in messages at odd hours, higher cellphone bills, and the need to tell acquaintances to stop announcing what they're having for dinner." Satirical references have also been made, such as speculations as to what Shakespeare and Freud might have tweeted, if they had used twitter. Steve Dotto opines that part of twitter's appeal is the challenge of trying to publish such messages in tight constraints.
twitter in the media
In March 2009 Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury strip began to satirize twitter, with the strip characters ironically highlighting the triviality of "tweets" and Roland defending the need to keep up with the constant-update trend or else lose relevance. SuperNews!, similarly, satirized twitter as an addiction to constant self-affirmation.
During a March 2009 episode of the The Daily Show, the host Jon Stewart negatively portrayed members of Congress who chose to twitter during President Obama's address to Congress (on 24 February 2009) rather than pay attention to the content of the speech. The show's Samantha Bee satirized media coverage of the service saying "there's no surprise young people love it - according to reports of young people by middle aged people".
Another episode of the Daily Show on February 26, 2009, during which host of NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams (a guest on the Daily Show and a journalist) derided "tweets" as only having subject matter which refers to the condition of the author in any given instant.
Williams implied that he would never use twitter because nothing he did at any given moment was interesting enough to publish in twitter format.
“What we are losing is editing,” Schorr commmented. “I grew up and nothing could be communicated to the outside world that did not go through an editor to make sure you had your facts right, spelling right and so on. Now, every person is his or her own publisher and/or her own editor or her own reporter ... The discipline that should go with being able to communicate is gone.”
In response, Carvin gave two recent examples of breaking news stories that played out on twitter - the attacks in Mumbai and the riots in Greece. According to Carvin, twitter and Facebook users wanted witnessed accounts rather than mere hearsay. “A system of checks and balances kicks into high gear with people who are just innately very skeptical ― wanting to get to the heart of a matter,” said Carvin. “... and sometimes stories actually get debunked that way.”
In a 2009 study from a neuroscience group led by Antonio Damasio discovered that rapid-fire news updates and instant social interaction are too fast for the 'moral compass' of the brain to process. The study showed it takes longer to activate processing of social emotions such as admiration and compassion, which are critical for developing a sense of morality. Although twitter was not explicitly singled out in the study, twitter was primarily targeted by media reports. In an interview with Ars Technica, Damasio claimed he would not have used twitter as an example and said that he intended to review the press release. Ars Technica also discovered Times had obtained the research paper before scientists got the chance to study the paper; supplemental data critical for interpretation was not available when the paper was released.
A court case in February 2009 worth $12.6 million in settlement dollars, one of the jurors (@johnathan) was found to be tweeting during the trial. This may have serious legal implications for the juror, particularly since he was telling his followers to divest stock in the company being sued.
the press article
"FAYETTEVILLE - A defendant who must cough up $12.6 million in a civil suit asked for a new trial Thursday because a juror used twitter to talk about the case during the proceedings. The juror - identified as "Juror Jonathan" - was not a fair and impartial juror and did not abide by the oath administered to him by the court. He researched information about the case and communicated with nonjury members, allege defendants Russell Wright and Stoam Holdings. A new trial is warranted, the motion states. The motion was filed by attorney Drew Ledbetter of Fayetteville.
"Oh and nobody buy Stoam. Its bad mojo and they'll probably cease to Exist, now that their wallet is 12m lighter." the juror posted from his twitter account during the trial, according to the motion.
The juror used his cell phone to send eight messages related to the trial. The jury awarded the money to two Northwest Arkansas men, Mark Deihl and William Nystrom, who invested in Wright's company. The company sold a building material called Stoam that combines the insulation qualities of foam with the strength of steel.”
trial tweeting trip-up
"Juror Jonathan" sent the following eight tweets out through twitter before, during and after the case, according to the motion for a new trial.
Those messages were:
• "Well, I finally got called for jury duty. It is kinda exciting"
• "trying to learn about Jury duty for tomorrow, but all searches lead me to Suggestions for getting out if it, instead of rocking it"
• "I guess Im early. Two Angry Men just wont do"
• "Im the only one who brought toys: my laptop and a book"
• "I got selected!"
• "And the verdict is ... Penguin Eds can not make fries"
• "So Jonathan, what did you do today? Oh nothing really, I just gave away TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS of somebody else's money"
• "oh and nobody buy Stoam. Its bad mojo and they'll probably cease to Exist, now that their wallet is 12m lighter."
prominent tweeple (twitter users)
The Los Angeles Fire Department put the technology to use during the October 2007 California wildfires. Some NASA projects such as Space Shuttle missions and the International Space Station provide updates via twitter. Several 2008 U.S. presidential campaigns used twitter as a publicity mechanism, including that of Democratic Party nominee and President Barack Obama. The Nader–Gonzalez campaign updated its ballot access teams in real-time with twitter and Google Maps. Twitter use increased 43% on election day. David Saranga of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that on December 30, 2008, Israel would be the first government to hold a worldwide press conference via twitter to take questions from the public about the war against Hamas in Gaza. The use of twitter by victims, bystanders, and the public to gather news and coordinate responses to the November 2008 Mumbai siege led CNN to call it "the day that social media appeared to come of age."
British celebrity Stephen Fry is also well known for having a large number of followers, and was reported in The Times as being the celebrity with the most followers on twitter.
However, the most followed celebrity today is Ashton Kutcher who is the first twitter user to reach the one million follower mark, with the CNN "Breaking News'" account, and singer Britney Spears in second and third place respectively.
Other celebrities using the service include NBA star Shaquille O'Neal, and former Washington D.C. radio "god" Don Geronimo. The Faculty of Psychology of the University of Vienna has been using twitter for formative course evaluation.
Oprah Winfrey announced on her show that she joined the service and gained over 300,000 followers in one weekend. (@oprah)
twitter usage
On February 12, 2009, there was a global meet-up called Twestival where twitter users came together in over 170 cities around the world to take the online community surrounding twitter offline as well as to raise money and awareness for Charity: water.
On April 10, 2008, James Buck, a graduate journalism student at University of California, Berkeley, and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested in Egypt for photographing an anti-government protest. On his way to the police station Buck used his mobile phone to send the message “Arrested” to his 48 "followers" on twitter. Those followers contacted U.C. Berkeley, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, and a number of press organizations on his behalf. Buck was able to send updates about his condition to his "followers" while being detained. He was released the next day from the Mahalla jail after the college hired a lawyer for him.
Research reported in New Scientist in May 2008 found that blogs, maps, photo sites and instant messaging systems like twitter did a better job of getting information out during emergencies, such as the shootings at Virginia Tech, than either the traditional news media or government emergency services. The study, performed by researchers at the University of Colorado, also found that those using twitter during the fires in California in October 2007 kept their followers (who were often friends and neighbors) informed of their whereabouts and of the location of various fires minute by minute. Additionally, organizations that support relief efforts are also using twitter. The American Red Cross uses twitter to exchange minute-to-minute information about local disasters, including statistics and directions.
Media outlets are also starting to use twitter as a source of public sentiment on issues. The first trades union twitter service was launched by the news and campaigning website LabourStart in June 2008. During the CBC News television coverage of the Canadian federal election on October 14, 2008, the CBC cited a graph, produced by the Infoscape Research Lab, of items mentioned on twitter, along with Tweets regarding Elizabeth May and Stéphane Dion, with the majority of the Dion Tweets calling for him to step down in response to the election results.
During the 2008 Mumbai attacks, eyewitnesses sent an estimated 80 tweets every five seconds as the tragedy unfolded. Twitter users on the ground helped in compiling a list of the dead and injured. In addition, users sent out vital information such as emergency phone numbers and the location of hospitals that needed blood donations. In January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 experienced multiple bird strikes and had to be ditched in the Hudson River after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport in New York City. Janis Krums, a passenger on one of the ferries that rushed to help, took a picture of the downed plane as passengers were still evacuating and tweeted it via TwitPic before traditional media arrived at the scene. In February 2009, the Australian Country Fire Authority used twitter to send out regular alerts and updates regarding the 2009 Victorian bushfires. During this time, the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, also used his twitter account to send out information on the fires, how to donate money and blood, and where to seek emergency help.
In October 2008 a draft US Army intelligence report identified the popular micro-blogging service as a potential terrorist tool. The report said, "twitter is already used by some members to post and/or support extremist ideologies and perspectives."
QUICK TIPS
Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (or “tweets”; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the twitter website, via short message service (e.g. on a cell phone), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific or Facebook.
How do I update?
There are A LOT of ways to update your twitter status.
The most obvious (and sometimes most reliable) is the twitter site itself.
While you can read tweets and tweet yourself at http://www.twitter.com and http://m.twitter.com on your phone. A lot of users use a so-called third-party “twitter client” like TweetDeck that talks to the twitter API. Just like you can read your email on the web, but many people prefer to use an email client like Outlook.
Where else can I
put my twitter feed?
You can view your feed in any feed aggregator (Google Reader, FriendFeed, Outlook, etc). Your feed can be accessed at
http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/username.rss - Your Feed
http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/username.rss - Your Friends Feed
as well as by clicking the RSS button at the bottom of your twitter page.
Another popular thing to do is add your twitter feed to facebook.
Twitter has its own Facebok App or you can just sync your facebook satus with twitter. I personally chose to use FriendFeed because it was the least intrusive.
http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/ will take your Twitter Tweets and put them in
your Facebook Profile Status.
How To Change
Your twitter Name
Without Losing Followers
I joined twitter in October of 07 not really knowing what it had in store for me. Well one thing led to another and as I reached my 1000 follower milestone I began to regret my original naming decision. Then I received a tweet from Ari Herzog concerning my twitter name and that was it, I had to change. Here is how I changed my twitter name without losing any followers.
First, make the name change. You can change your twitter name at any time on the ’settings’ page at twitter.com.
Second, create a new account with your old twitter name. You don’t have to do much with this account. Maybe add a URL to your new twitter account and post a single tweet notifying people that your name has changed.
You won’t lose any of your followers and they’ll all see the name change as their twitter clients refresh.
Notes: You might miss a few @replys right after the switch. Most twitter apps won’t update your existing tweets with your new name until they are restarted. As a result you are at risk of getting some @replys sent to your old account. This could also happen with people you talk to regularly. Be sure to continue to monitor your old account so you can catch missed replies and update your follower of the name change.
Source: Johnathan Bishop, #JonDBishop.
(Jon Bishop is an Internet Marketing Specialist in Boston)
2.
GETTING STARTED
what the heck is
twitter anyway?
twitter is a microblogging service.
You can use it to post short messages up to 140 characters in length.
twitter is like sex.
You can read all the stuff (or look at it) about sex all you want,
but if you’ve never had it, you simply have no idea what it’s like.
Source: Michael Martine,
www.michaelmartine.com/2008/04/11/twitter-is-like-sex/
The best how to explain twitter is - that you can’t really explain twitter. It’s one of those things that you have to experience before you really know what it is.
So we’re going to start you off at the very beginning ...
signing up is extremely simple
To sign up for twitter, go to twitter.com and click on “Get Started - Join!”. Fill out the few personal details, and voila - you have your own twitter account …
Okay I’m on twitter. Now what?
Do some housecleaning!
pick a good username
If you already have a username you tend to use around the web, stick with that. If you’re coming up with something new, make it easy to type and to say verbally. Try to avoid names that might look “spammy”, such as “john351” or something like that.
change your profile pic
and the default background theme
There are a bunch of default settings, but somehow it’s a “must” to personalize your profile. It makes a difference when others are looking at your page deciding whether or not to follow you. Don’t go overboard here though. You can design your own background, find one on the web, or first just stick to the ones that twitter has given you to choose from. You canchange these in your “Settings”, the link for which is located under your picture on your profile page on the right sidebar.
You’ll also want to upload a personal photo of yourself. If you are running your account as a business, you could use your logo instead.
keep your tweets public!
What the point of joining twitter if you’re just going to keep everything private? Besides, twitter truly shines when it can aggregate everyone’s tweets together, and it can only do that with public tweets.
enter your personal details and your website
Be sure to include your website and information about yourself since twitter people actually want to know these things. One of the first things someone does when looking at a new profile is click the web link. It’s a great way to learn more about the person or the business. It won’t drive a ton of traffic to your site, but it doesn’t hurt either.
set your location
It might seem funny to set your location to something random like “my room” but setting your location properly makes it easier for others to find you. The format “city, state/province, country” probably works best because then others can search by all three criteria.
post some tweets
before you follow others
Shortly after you follow someone, they’ll likely be looking at your profile. If it is empty or contains only a tweet or two, chances are they won’t follow you back.
build up your network
Go easy on the following at first. twitter will allow you to seach your email account for twitter users, to import e-mail lists, and to send out invitations to join twitter. Click on 'Find People' in the navigation bar on the top. Select the “Find on other networks” taskbar ...
Use your email address you want to check (Don't worry, twitter will use your personal details just once and will not store your details).
Now you you can see which of your contacts are on twitter, and you can choose the ones you would like to follow.
After this step twitter will show you all your contacts of your email address book. Those are the people, which are not yet twitter users (at least not with using the email address which you have in the address book of your email account). Now you can choose some of those or all of them, and send out an automated invitation to join twitter. The folks will receive an email and might look to find you on twitter soon …
add suggested users
In this tab you will see some so-called “Suggested users”. Most of them are celebrities, news channels, or twitter executives. Some might be companies. Take a look to this list, choose the ones you want to follow, and check this list sometimes in the future, to watch out if there are interesting people in there to follow.
new contacts and new friends
Do you want to build up a network of new contacts and find new friends?
Resist the temptation to follow everyone!
If you try to follow hundreds of people all at once, you’ll likely be flagged as a spammer by twitter members. Even if you aren’t, it looks bad to be following 500 people without any followers of your own.
The best way to build a list of new interesting people is to go to the twitter search box located on the right of your home page or click on search at the bottom of the page to visit the twitter search engine at search.twitter.com. There you'll find the “Advanced Search” option. Simply plug in your interests or locations. This will then spit tons of people back out at you that you can choose to follow. (See Chapter 9 “Search Options and Making New Friends”).
follow users who live where you do
This is our favorite suggestion, because it’s the quickest way to get value out of twitter. People often complain that a tweet like “Calgary Trail is a parking lot” seems mundane, but to others in the area it can be really useful (that’s a busy road in Edmonton). By following other locals, you’ll reduce the number of tweets that seem mundane. Their updates (related to traffic or cultural events, for example) might be useful. Businesses can form instant direct relationships with their customer bases simply by signing up and using the service regularly.
These are 2 third-party websites/apps where you can also find local users:
www.twellow.com
www.twitterlocal.net
learn the lingo and
the twetiquette
Tweets (Updates) - Replies - Retweets - Hashtags -Twooshes - Direct Messages - Tweetups
It’s quite simple really. As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, an “update” is called a tweet. If you start your tweet with @username, then it’s a reply and it will show up on the replies tab for that user. Something like #yet is called a hashtag, and it’s basically a way of categorizing your tweets and to give them keywords. If someone tweets something that you’d like to reshare, start your tweet with RT @username (or you can use “retweet” instead of “RT” if you like).
The “Twictionary” (dictionary) chapter will further help you!
start using twitter search -
for everything!
The Twitter search box is what really makes twitter useful. Don't forget to regulary search for your username as well, so that you can see any tweets that reference to you, find out what people think of the latest movie, or find links on a topic on that you are interested. Make the twitter search box your best friend – you won’t regret it!
Search for tweets of other tweeple for anything you like. Using “Search Operators“ will help you to refine your search. (See Chapter 9 “Search Options and Making New Friends”)
You are in New York and you want to know more about openings in Tribeca? Endless updates (tweets) will show up …
You stay in Miami and you want to know insights about parties other members are joining, hosting or recommending? A search for miami +party +tonight will show up all the latest insights ...
be active, be interesting
Post status updates. Post replies. Post links.
The most interesting users on twitter post a combination of random tweets, replies, and links. As with anything else, you can learn a lot by simply paying attention and observing others. If you don’t treat twitter as a personal experience and spam it with sales messages, you will get unfollowed very quickly.
Once you start following someone, their updates (so-called Tweets), will appear in your start home page (previously called “timeline”), or your twitter feed.
To post your messages, or “Tweets”, go to your profile page (Home) and type your tweet into the “What are you doing?” box.
If you find someone is getting on your nerves with too many senseless Tweets, go ahead and remove them from your Following-list by click on “remove” next to their user names.
Third-party applications (so-called “clients”) like those mentioned below make the overall process a bit easier and remove the need to visit the twitter website to make your updates. Similar to an email client like Outlook.
pick your interface
There are many third-party services and applications, so-called “clients”, to choose from (sometimes referred to as twitterlings). All those work with or enhance twitter. Many are designed to allow easy access to twitter from specific devices, such as the iPhone, a BlackBerry or a mobile phone, whilst others are pc desktop clients, designed to make it easier for users to access and update their twitter account.
TweetDeck is a very popular desktop client:
The primary benefits of TweetDeck are its ability to show you everything you want to see at once, in an organized column format. It defaults with columns of @Replies, DirectMessages, and AllFriends. You can keep or delete those columns (and bring them back again if you choose).
Its power becomes apparent when you start creating your own columns. This allows you to ‘file’ your follows. Want a steady stream of life coach tweets? Hit the ‘group’ button, and select all the life coaches you follow. Repeat to create columns of IT folk, speaker coaches, celebrities, artists, family and friends – and organize the columns on your screen by moving them left or right. If you have 10 columns built, just use the slide bar. If you keep TweetDeck running, it keeps a long record of tweets, allowing you to go to a column after days away, and catch up.
TweetDeck also allows you to isolate individuals you follow by clicking their name at the bottom of a tweet, giving you a list of their stats and a log of recent tweets. Did your friend just @Reply someone you don’t know? Click their name in the tweet and they will show up as well, allowing you to follow, and even assign them to a column of your choice.
Looking for people talking on a particular topic? Create a search column on your term, and see a stream of Twitterers perfect for your list.
Other features include an automatic '12 seconds' column, which interfaces with the micro-video blogging application, a scoop button which creates a cloud of what is hot on Twitter at the moment, and also has standard buttons allowing you to reply, direct message, and favorite, both on top of the application, and appearing when you hover over an avatar.
While having little to do with functionality, many people complain its just ugly. While the blocky skin seems unavoidable, custom colors are just a few clicks away (hit the wrench at the top-right to play with settings).
Source: Rich Hopkins, @RichHopkins
You can download the free beta version at www.tweetdeck.com
Some other popular desktop clients are:
Twhirl, www.twhirl.org
Seesmic, http://desktop.seesmic.com
Spaz, www.funkatron.com/spaz
There are entire blogs devoted to writing about twitter applications, twitter tools, and websites for twitter. One of those blogs is: www.everythingtwitter.com