The hash tag (#) is not an official Twitter feature, but it has certainly become a standard element of tweeting. However, the concept can be a little hard to wrap your head around, and some people experience problems getting them to work right, so here are some posts I wrote about it during the year that I hope will help answer any questions you may have about it.
Twitter Lists were implemented a little while back, so I figured it's about time I try my hand at explaining them!
This morning, a reader contacted me because every time he updated his business page status line, the status line on his personal profile was also being updated.
In previous posts, I wrote about how you could have Twitter automatically update your Facebook status line directly from Twitter or with TweetDeck. Now you can also connect your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts so your tweets update your LinkedIn status line. And, unlike with Facebook, it works in the other direction as well--you can post an update on LinkedIn and tweet it at the same time.
Sometimes I swear the geniuses at Facebook and Twitter are in competition to see who can be the most tone deaf to their users. Twitter has just taken a giant leap ahead with their new retweet feature.
Woo-hoo! Tech for Luddites has made it into the top 5 finalists for a Mashable Open Web Award in the Most Educational To Follow category. Thanks to everyone who nominated me!
Okay, so it's really called Facebook Lite--Facebook's latest attempt to Twitterize itself. It's just arrived today, so this is my first look at it, and my first thoughts about it. If I say anything here that turns out to be incorrect, please let me know and I'll set the record straight.
In an earlier post, Bug Alert: Some Twitter Hash Tags Don't Show Up in Searches, I noted that one reader was having this problem, but I wasn't able to find other examples.
Reader Laura asked: I have sent url links to a friend a couple of times & they have not automatically shortened to tiny URLs so my tweet itself is next to nothing! Is there a setting I need to click or something?
A reader recently joined Twitter and found a number of other users who were tweeting about a topic that interested him. They were using a specific hash tag to identify the topic, so he began adding that tag to his own related tweets as well.
Shortly thereafter, someone contacted him claiming that his organization owned the hash tag and had even set their Twitter user name to the same thing. The organization demanded that my reader stop using the tag, so he wanted to know if this was fair game.
Since I posted my series on Facebook Pages a couple of weeks ago, I've received several additional questions through comments and e-mails. I'm going to respond to a number of them here so everyone can benefit from the answers.
Reader Cheryl publishes a blog--let's call it A Cool Blog--and she wanted to create a Twitter account of the same name. Unfortunately, when she signed up for the service, the name was already taken.
In my earlier posts, Read, Send, and Share Tweets on Facebook and Send Tweets to Facebook Using TweetDeck, I gave instructions on different ways to have your Twitter tweets automatically post to your Facebook profile as your status line.
Reader (and new Twitterer) Debbie recently sent me this question: How in the world do people stay current on twitter? I'm following some people who are also following 6,000-60,000 others. Huh? Do they only twitter all day? i don't understand how one can even spend an hour a day staying current on all that.
Any advice?
In my earlier post, I explained how you can import your Twitter timelien to Facebook as well as send tweets from there by installing the Twitter application. When you do that, you also have the option of having your own tweets appear as a Facebook status update. If you're only interested in the latter feature, you can use the TweetDeck client to send tweets to both Twitter and Facebook at the same time.
You may have seen this hash tag rear its ugly head in the last couple of days but not really understood exactly what the problem is.
Over the last week or so, Twitter has rolled out a new home page design.
I've written a number of posts about Twitter previously. Here's a compilation of the ones that address some of the more common questions and problems.
Recently a reader wrote to me and told me that a hash tag that she and some friends were using wasn't showing up in searches.
Reader Christy recently asked me how to get tweets marked with a specific hash tag to appear on her Twitter page.
I got this question today from Reader Charmian: "Often when I retweet, the original message becomes too long and gets cut off. What should I do?..."
When I was doing my series on Facebook last week, I mentioned that I had wanted to do a post about synching different social media sites. Well, I've been doing some research into the various options and have discovered that there's so much out there that it would be impossible to write a single entry about it all. So instead I'm going to write individual posts about the different options available.
Reader Melanie recently sent me this question:"I'm wondering whether there are etiquette rules around retweeting. I often see tweets I think my tweeps might enjoy but don't want to offend by doing it incorrectly."
Not all that long ago, the only people who had to know how to manipulate photos and other digital images were graphic designers.
I discussed TinyURLs in my earlier post, Four Ways To Engage Your Tweeps, but it has many more uses than just Twitter so it's worth its own post.
Once you've started using Twitter, it won't take long before you come across what's known as a hash tag. That's when you see something in the middle of a tweet that has a # prefix.
Recently, I've heard a couple of people ask how you can keep track of topics that are being Tweeted about, wondering if there's something like Google Alerts for it.
Now that you've been spending some time on Twitter, figuring out how it all works, you're probably gathering more followers minute by minute. But even if you only have a few, if they're power-Twitterers, you may already be feeling a little overwhelmed trying to keep up with it all.
You've signed up for Twitter. You've created your profile and tweeted your first tweet. But unless you only want to use Twitter to tell the world what YOU're doing (which is highly frowned upon, by the way), it's time to start really interacting with your Tweeps (Twitter Peeps).
Yesterday, I provided the basic steps for joining Twitter. Now it's time to start using it!
If you've decided to take the Twitter plunge, you may find the sign-up process a bit confusing in places. This post will walk you through it step-by-step so you can be up and tweeting in no time.
Check out the blog of just about any hard-core Twitter evangelist and you'll probably find some variation of this statement: "I didn't 'get' Twitter at all at first, but now I LOVE it!"
