How To Become a Level 80 Twitter Ninja
Whether you're a grizzled Twitter veteran looking for some fresh ways to use the service, or you're still not on board and need a better reason than "Oprah and Shaq seem to like it," we'll show you how to tweet like a butterfly, twitter like a bee.
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In the two years since we first ran a feature on Twitter (“Your Mac: The Great Communicator,” Oct/07), the service’s popularity has exploded. If you joined the Twitter conga line long ago, its usefulness and flexibility are no news to you. But even if you’ve never Twittered in your life, the service still probably isn’t news to you--it seems you can’t turn around without a reporter, columnist, commentator, or comedian hauling out the tired old “What’s the deal with Twitter?” line.
We’re not going to bother rehashing the lame questions about whether Twitter is dumbing us all down 140 characters at a time, why so many people care what Ashton Kutcher thinks, whether members of Congress should tweet, or if the alleged egomaniacs who use Twitter were given enough attention as kids.
Instead we offer Twitter newbies some reasons to join the club, arm veterans with answers for those pesky newb questions, and give every user the skills to push Twitter to the max. It’s time to rise above the hype and wield Twitter like a 140-character katana sword. It’s time to become a Twitter ninja.
Twitter Newbs are Just Ninjas in Training
Twitter is incredibly useful, but it doesn’t hit you over the head with what you’re supposed to do with it. How you use it depends on your needs. But that flexibility also means that neophytes tend to have a lot of questions. Twitter has a great, detailed FAQ (help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/13920), so we won’t reinvent the wheel here. But this is how we at Mac|Life answer certain questions that just keep coming up.
Q. What the heck is Twitter?
What you're doing, in 140 characters. But it's more than just that...
A. It’s a microblogging service to which users post 140-character text blurbs, or tweets. Your feed, or timeline, shows the tweets of everyone you’re following, and everyone who’s following you sees your tweets in their timeline.
Q. How do you find people to follow?
A. Most people start by finding people they already know. Click the Find People link (twitter.com/invitations/find_on_twitter) to search your IM and email contacts for people. If they post too much about their dietary habits, you can always unfollow them later. Click their names to check out their profiles, and you’ll see their following/followers numbers on the right side of the page. Click the following number to see the list of who that person follows--maybe you’ll be interested in those people too. Click their names to open those profiles and read their tweets, and if you like ’em, click the Follow link to add them to your list.
Sites like WhoShouldIFollow.com can suggest Twitter users to follow.
We're checking out who Ray (@raguilera) follows, to see if we should be following them too.
Q. So I post to it and read it on my Mac, at Twitter.com?
A. Yes. You can also read and post from a wide variety of Twitter clients, which are applications that run on your Mac, iPhone, iPod touch, or BlackBerry. (See our roundup of Twitter clients for Mac users at http://www.maclife.com/article/feature/8_essential_twitter_apps_mac_users.) And anyone can post to Twitter from a cell phone by texting their tweet to 40404. Just tell Twitter your phone number first in Settings > Devices. You can get notifications sent to your phone too.
TweetDeck is one of our favorite Twitter clients for the Mac and the iPhone.
NEXT: Q and A continued...
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