tools for twits

Here’s a simple list of definitions. A glossary of common terms for your reference to Twitter.

140 characters – a reference to the number of characters allowed in sending a message.

# Hashtag – a keyword tag designed to organize and help connect people wanting to discover and follow a common topic of interest.

@ Reply – use the @ symbol to respond to people or mention them so they can see the tweet.

Avatar - a graphical image displayed to represent yourself with a picture or symbol.

Background Profile – the look, feel and content of your Twitter profile can be adjusted to display a certain brand and offer extra information for people to read.

Block - a method of stopping users from following you.

Direct Message (D or DM) – a way to send a private message to an individual user.

failwhale – the fail whale is a page that shows up when Twitter can’t find something or is “overwhelmed” with traffic.

Favorites - a way of marking a favorite tweet or user so you can return to it later.

Follow / Followers / Following – on social media sites you connect with other users and on Twitter this is known as following, so anyone in that you follow is a part of your user group and a Follower is someone that follows you. Understand that users do not have to follow each other, it can be one directional.

Follow Friday – a tag used on twitter to recommend and spotlight good users to follow. This as the name suggests is done every Friday.

List - a feature added to Twitter in 2009 to group and follow Twitter users by topic, making it easier to follow a specific topic of interest.

Locked Profile – a profile or user that only follows people by invitation.

Micro Blog – a form of social media that allows a user to create and organize short interactive messages for a community.

Mistweet -  the act of sending a message or tweet with a mistake in it or to the wrong person.

Retweet (RT) – a way of sharing other Twitterers messages by resending them to your group of followers.

Stream - the timeline or current Tweets being viewed on your home page. All the tweets being sent out by the people you are following.

Tweeps - one of your Twitter friends.

Tweeple / Tweeter / Twitterer – people or users on Twitter .

Tweet -  a single message sent on Twitter.

Tweetspeak - the result of learning to effectively speak in 140 characters or less using abbreviations and terms to be understood and create a clear message.

Tweetup -  an arranged, usually live meeting (but it could be a virtual meeting online) by Twitterers.

Twibe - a group of followers that are all following each other.

Twit - common English term for a fool.

Twitter application (app) – a program designed to interact with Twitter and offer extra functionality to a user.

Twitter Client – an application used to help manage your Twitter experience with tools such as follow and tweet management. Some of the common and main ones include Hootsuite,  Seesmic, Tweetdeck, Twhirl, Twitterific, Google, Spaz – there are now hundreds.

Twitter Directory – a listing of Twitterers, usually grouped by topic or location. Popular and large directories include JustTweetIT, Geo Follow, Twellow, Tweet Find, Twibs, TwitterGroups, Twibes, Twitterectory, We Follow.

Twitoshpere / Twitterverse – a term given for everything to do with Twitter.

Unfollow - the act of stopping or unfollowing a Twitter user.

Url Shortener – a tool used to shorten and encrypt a web link for insertion into a Tweet. Some common shorteners include tiny url, bit.ly, ow.ly, bud url, cli.gs.

User Name (Handle) – the name chosen to represent yourself on Twitter, your address in a sense.

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