how do you use twitter?

[Amber]

I dont understand it, someone explain! why do you use # and @ WHY? im 100% serious!

[918]

I would also like to know

[waddupp.]

the @ sign is tag people in your tweet
and the # is used to "hashtag"
ex: I am so bored right now. #homealone #someonesaveme
hashtags can be anything

[Chris]

Usernames on twitter all start with @. It's actually a brilliant idea, because as soon as you see @whatever, you know it's a twitter account. No technical reason.

# is used to add tags to your post. Basically, if somebody wants to see the latest twitter posts about "topic", they search for "#topic" on twitter. Again, no particular technical reason.

[Fester Frump]

@(someones username) would insure that message appeared on that persons feed, even if they don't follow you. Everyone who follows you also sees messages you send with the @(someones username) in them. Say you wanted to send a message to a specific celebrity, you would tweet with @(celebrity twitter handle) in the message.

#(some word) is a searchable item, a.k.a. a key word, usually specific to a subject that a lot of people might be tweeting about. You search on the key word and you will find all tweets with that key word regardless of who sent them. Mostly useful when some major event is occurring in real time.