Twitter Commands and Twitter Glossary

Anyone can find your messages by searching for keywords, so don’t tweet anything private. Anyone can also see any replies you make to others’ tweets — these replies begin with @theirhandle. Doing this saves the message in the recipient’s Replies tab for later reference by the recipient.

If you want to send private messages, known as Direct Messages, or DMs, begin your post with D followed by a space and handle of the person you want to send to (with or without the @ sign.) For example, this sends a direct message to us “D @smpgcom Love the book.” Don’t make the rookie mistake of using DM at the beginning of a direct message (we’ve all been there). Everyone can see that message.

As a privacy measure, and to ensure that random people can’t DM you with spam, you can only DM someone when you are mutually following one other.

One thing to especially remember about using Twitter: You don’t have to read all the tweets.

Once you follow more than a dozen people it’s hard to have a life and follow that many tweets, especially if those you follow love to yack. You may want to consider getting a Twitter app for your mobile phone if you want to keep close tabs on your Twitter feed. There are several, especially for iPhones.

Like all social media, Twitter has its own specialized vocabulary. Here’s a list of some of the more familiar terms you’re likely to run into.

• At Reply or @reply — a reply to another user
• DM — stands for direct message, but use D to start a direct message, not DM
• Failwhale — graphic that appears when Twitter is over capacity
• Hashtags or # — marking a word as a keyword
• Retweet (or RT) — repeating another’s tweet
• Tweeps — people who follow you on Twitter
• Tweet — sending a Twitter message
• Tweetbacks — the background for your Twitter Webpage
• Twitterati — A-list twitterers everyone follows
• Twitterverse — the Twitter community
• Via — instead of using retweet, use “via @username” when you paraphrase another’s tweet

There are also a lot of cute or funny twitter terms such as Twapplications, Twaiting, Twalking, Twead, Twebay, Tweetheart, Twerminology, Twittectomy, Twittastic, Twittercal mass, Twitterfly, Twitterish, Twitterject, Twitterloop, Twitterphobe, Twitterphoria, Twitterstream, Twittertude, Twitticisms, but we won’t bother to define them here, as they’re generally not in wide use and most are, quite frankly, more than a bit silly, or SillyTwit, if you like.