What do all the abbreviations mean on Twitter?

[Heidi L]

I just joined Twitter today and am trying to make sense of many tweets from other people.....&amp ?????? RT??????? Can someone fill me in to what these mean and others I might come across?

[deepkite038]

RT is a Reply Tweet. It shows the tweet someone replied to and what they had to say about it.

amp is just an & sign.

People use "tiny.url" a lot on Twitter, and it's to save some of their precious 140 characters.

Twitpic is usually uploaded off of a phone.. More than likely an iPhone, cause they support many apps that make Twitter too easy to be addicted to.

all the @'s is basically name dropping ;] jk. it's like a direct message, because it shows up on someones page, but everyone that follows you can see it. You can only send direct messages to people who follow you in return.

That's all I can think of right now.. I would tell you what the #'s mean, but that's why I came to Answers in the first place.. I've yet to find out.

[ig4mer]

RT = Retweet. It is used when you tweet someone else's tweet and your giving that person credit. Kind of like using a quote. So If I say "Mets lost 5-4" and you want to RT my tweet you would write RT @ig4mer Mets lost 5-4

@ = For reply or to direct a tweet at someone. So if you want to respond to my "Mets lost 5-4" message you would write something like @ig4mer That's ok you can't win them all

# = Subject or a conversation. So I can put #mets on all my messages to indicate I am talking about this subject. #Mets lost 5-4.
This is used to search for conversations. without the # tag you would only see tweets of people you follow but with the # tag you can search twitter for something like #Mets so see everyone would talk about this subject. This is especially effective when something is happening real time like the mumbai shootings with the #mumbai tag.

Hope this helps.