How does Twitter work?

[Jordan Isaiah]

[Ewaja]

Put your dick in the modem.

[chicknchas3r]

Its basically a micro blog for each individual person. You can choose who to follow, and then those people's blog posts or "tweets" will show up on your screen when they post. People following you, will see what you write on their screen. This scrolling text screen is called your "feed" as in "newsfeed"

Text is limited to just 140 characters on Twitter to keep everything short and digestible.

There are two major ways to interact with others on Twitter (other than simply reading and being read).

@ Symbol
if you write this in your tweet followed by the name of someone else on twitter, it will draw their attention to that tweet even if they are not following you. You can use this to reply to other tweets, message others, or simply to mention people who might be specifically interested in what you are showing. example: @abrahamlincoln People usually put these at the beginning of tweets for replying, the middle of tweets if you would be using their name in a sentence, and the end of a tweet simply to draw their attention to it, but it doesn't actually matter.

Hashtag (#)
if you add a hashtag to your tweet, it groups it with all other tweets that have ever been written with the same hashtag by anyone on twitter. For example if you write #YahooAnswers, anyone can click on that to see anything else on the topic of Yahoo Answers. These must be one word and you can make up new ones instantly just by typing them in. People like to use these to ironically classify their own tweets (example #bored #1stworldproblems) or to join a live tweeting fest at an event (#indy500) or to simply join a major conversation on Twitter (#London2012). These are almost always done at the end of tweets, but again, it doesn't actually matter.

What makes twitter so good is how simple and open the platform is, You can use your tweets anyway you want, and you don't deal with walls, statuses, and likes like on facebook. Have fun!