Simple twitter question: (easy)?

[David S]

What does it mean when people say:
@person's.name or
#example

???

[diva42]

the @persons name lets other people view that persons twitter profile and addresses that person specifically when you send a tweet.
Here is an explanation I found on the pound tag

Fundamentally, Twitter is simple to use, however there is a learning curve. Here’s a quick explanation of the #, also known as hashtagging.

Basically it creates a easy way to track topics. For example, recently everyone who was talking about the Obama inauguration were using #inaug09. This way you could search for this to follow the conversation.

The easy way to track hashtags is to use Twitter Search (you will likely see hashtags as trending topics below the search window). Choose Advanced Search, then scroll down to “This hashtag” and enter the tag you’re searching for. You may also want to use this function to search for an idea you have to start your own hastag, to be sure someone else isn’t already using i

[Gene]

@username means the post is directed at that specific user and they will be notified that the post was made. It's usually used to reply directly to someone else's tweet.

#example is usually used to tag posts with certain keywords, usually relating to Twitter's current "trending topics"

[James]

they send that person a message

[Halgy]

@person's.name means that they are talking to that person. It's kind of like a 'Re:' in email.

If they also put 'RT' in the tweet, it is kind of like a 'Fwd:' in an email; they are Re Tweeting what that other person said. This is done so that people who don't follow the original person can get the message, but without the second person claiming the tweet as his own.

#example is called a hash tag. This marks the tweet as having a common subject as other tweets. For example, if I was talking about the Chicago Bears (for some reason), I cold put '#DaBears' in my tweet so that other Bears fans can find it.