HOW TO TWITTER
by Lauren Haws
A tweet is like a facebook status, but with a character limit of 140. The beauty of this character limit is that where on facebook you basically have unlimited space to be funny and entertaining, the wannabe comedians of twitter must be funny in much less space. Which leads to more hilarious stuff.
To write a tweet, open your twitter app and look for the little quill pen icon in the right upper corner:
Say hello to my twitter feed. I "follow" people and their tweets show up on my feed. Just like when you friend someone on facebook and their posts show up on your newsfeed.
So you click on the little button and it takes you to the compose tweet page:
So type out your message in the little box. Speak your mind, but keep it confined to 140 characters (surprisingly more difficult than you would imagine).
I wrote out my message, and added a hashtag.
A hashtag is a set of words with a "#" sign in front of them with no spaces between which turns the word that is hashtagged into a link. If you click on the link, for instance, in this tweet the hashtag is "bffs4life", so if I tap on the hashtag it will take me to every other post on twitter with the hashtag "bffs4life".
Hashtags can turn hilarious when used ironically. For instance, I was on facebook (one of the last to hop on the hashtag bandwagon after twitter and instagram) and one of my friends posted a post about the new facebook hashtags that was something along the lines of "facebook has hashtags now?! #wow #hashtags #arewehumanorarewehashtag"
#AREWEHUMANORAREWEHASHTAG hilarious.
Anyway, don't let hashtags wig you out. After exploring twitter for a little bit you'll start to get in the groove of hashtags and it'll be easy to throw them in there.
Notice I also have "@bentleysusan828" thrown on there. This is like a hashtag but it links to your friend's twitter profile. So when I publish this tweet, someone could tap on her name and go to her profile. Tagging someone also causes it to show up in their notifications. So it is also used for responding to tweets.
See, if I click on the connect tab at the bottom, it takes me to all the tweets I was mentioned in. So let's say I click on that last one.
Here's the actual tweet. I like this tweet, so I tap the star icon- this means I favorited it. It's exactly like "liking" something on facebook. That will also pop up on Hannah's notifications, and that'll probably make her smile (see folks, this is how you win friends and influence people. Through favoriting tweets on twitter.)
But that tweet is kind of too awesome to just favorite. So I can go one step further:
I tap the little green-arrow-circle-thingy icon. This means I retweeted it. This copies the tweet and moves it to my profile. That means that other people can see it, and it looks like this:
It will show up like this on my profile AND on my friends new feeds, as if I was the one who tweeted it- the only difference if that it has the little "retweeted" thing at the bottom. So as you're scrolling through your twitter feed, you'll see lots of tweets from people you don't know...this is because people you follow are retweeting them- because they like them, or they think they're funny, or they're something nice.
This is also how people get twitter famous. Because if your tweets are being retweeted, that means a whole new crowd of twitter users gets exposed to your tweets and they can go follow you if they like what they see. So, if you get retweeted that is something to be excited about.
So this last icon is the reply button- this is how she wrote the tweet to me in the first place. I made a comment about something in a tweet, she wanted to say something and responded with that tweet up there that I favorited and retweeted. I saw her response because when you hit the reply button, it automatically starts out the tweet with that "@..." reply thing with your username. And then you just type and publish like a normal tweet and this allows them to see it.
once you're done with a tweet, just hit the home button in that corner and it'll take you back to your news feed where you can look at some more tweets.
One of the other entertaining twitter activites to partake in is the "trending topics" category. Trending is a list of popular tweets, that can be found if you go here:
click on "discover" at the bottom.
Then scroll down until you see "trends":
There might be some gems right here, but if there isn't, tap "view all trends" and it will take you to a big ol' list:
and scroll through until you find something you think might be entertaining. I noticed "#wrongfilmquotes" at the bottom and figured that seemed like a winner:
Scroll and read and laugh and experience the hilariousness. If you have something funny to contribute, go create a tweet with the featured hashtag in it and your tweet will appear here, too.
Anyway, to wrap it all up, here's some twitter fun that happened to me this morning.
So I noticed in the trending category, one of the top hashtags was "#oneruleduringsex". I personally didn't even need to click on it, I just had an idea for a post. So I did a little google search and attached an image and voila!!:
(I couldn't fit it all in one screen shot, but theres the whole thing. Note the "six favorites" at the bottom and the two responses. Booyah!)
Hey, I thought it was pretty funny.
Hopefully this was somewhat helpful.
xoxo, Lauren <3
PS: I have some personal favorite people that I follow so I'll just list 'em:
The Bloggess @thebloggess
Thanks Obama @dangitobama
no @tbhjuststop
Wrong Lyrics @wronglyrics
Kat Barger (she's my english teacher from junior year and she cracks me up) @katplusgatz
YA BOY BILL NYE (gangsta speak+ science= hilarious) @yaboybillnye
Puns @omgthatspunny
Typical White Girl (a personal favorite of mine) @TypicalGirl
If I could be funny in 140 characters this blog entry would be a lifesaver!!
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