They Didn’t Teach Twitter in Typing Class
When I was in school (I will let you figure out the year) we were taught to type on actual typewriters. The thought of computers was something you only saw in Sci Fi films: big, scary machines that would absorb your data and then turn on you and all of mankind. This is how I viewed technology until I decided to give it a great big bear hug.
Fast forward to 2009. Most 3rd graders are more technologically savvy than me and I find myself playing catch up in a game that changes by the minute. “Just breathe”, I tell myself. Breathing doesn’t help me embed a flash into my HTML or shorten my URL to a bit.ly.
What?
I took Spanish in high school. What is this language you speak?
I was a theater major in college. What is entertaining about this?
Cookies? Only if I can dip them in milk!!!
Twitter was introduced to me at SXSW back in March. @juliaroy from Undercurrent was kind enough to explain it to me in laymen’s terms and got me really excited about it. @mopostal from Carrot Creative set up my account and helped me to get started. I lovingly refer to them as my Twitter parents even though in real life (IRL) I could technically be each of theirs.
SXSW came to a close and like birds weaning their young (I would be the young in this scenario) I had to learn to fly by myself. Pushed from the nest, I decided to go for it.
With a very limited knowledge of the vastness of the web I started tweeting. What I had for lunch. When I was going to the gym. What I had for lunch, again. Yawn. Really who cares?
Then I started following some of the heavy hitters. Reading their tweets, seeing the kind of content they shared…and I learned. Content is king and the more you share the more people will want to engage with you.
I’ve read countless blogs on the dos and don’ts of Twitter. How to tweet. How to retweet. How to link. It’s all out there and it can get confusing because there are so many mixed messages. Just yesterday someone I retweeted told me that the proper way to do it is by preceding the retweet with “RT” as opposed to following it up with “via”. I’ve seen and done both so I am not sure what the Twitter authorities say to that. I appreciate the info but a “thank you” would have been nice too.
I am a big fan of the retweet myself. If someone tweets content that I find informative or entertaining I tend to retweet it. In the Twitter world this is a like a “good job” pat on the back. There are opposing viewpoints on whether to thank the retweeter. Some people don’t do it at all. Some say only in a DM. I personally try to thank everyone who retweets me in my stream. It’s just my thing. Sue me.
I’ve heard Twitter described as a cocktail party with many little conversations going on at once. I think of it more as transferring to a new school and no one wants anything to do with you until you prove yourself. You really have to work to earn your reputation. There are no free passes (unless you’re a celebrity then you’re like a raw steak dropped into a circle hungry wolves). Put in the time and the possibilities are endless. Your community will grow and in turn you will too.
In my five months on Twitter I have been educated, entertained and enlightened on a daily basis from some of the most interesting tweeps in the twitterverse. I ran into @juliaroy at BlogHer two weeks ago and the first thing she asked me was what I liked about Twitter. Without giving it a second thought I knew my answer. It’s the people.
RT and via @__ are the same thing. Some twitter apps RT, others end it in via @ __. Sometimes If I find a link someone they directed me to, but it wasn’t necessarily a tweet (facebook, blog, etc) I will end it in via @__ to give them credit.