A brief discussion on twitter.com, complete with a sample conversation.

1. Twitter Tutorial
The “lay of the land”

2. Conversation Analogy
• Imagine 4 people logged into twitter: Assume a sample conversation starts
Ted = ted44, aka ted44@yahoo.com up between these people :
Sue = sb22, aka sb22@live.com
Mark = m33, aka mrk@hotmail.com Ted says “Hi, Recently read Seattle
Times article indicating that Patrick
Bill = w321, aka bill33@aol.com Dempsey’s investment group will
acquire Tully’s”
Sue says “Do you know when he
@ted44 will be back in Seattle?”
Mark says “Ted, Sue, Mark – I hear he will
@sb22 be back next Friday”
@m33 Bill references what Mark said
@w321

3. General Terminology
“follows/following”, “followed by” : “shortened URL” :
• So, Ted “follows” Sue, Mark, and Bill’s • Many times, a web site URL is very long.
comments. Whatever these 3 people Thus, URL’s may get shortened to help
say, Ted can see their conversation cut sentence length. A shortened URL
when logged into Twitter. looks like bit.ly/10EzbPr or
• When Sue logs in, she notes that she is http://bit.ly/10EzbPr
“followed by” Ted. But, to see what “directly addressing individuals” :
Mark and Bill have to say, she must @ ahead of a word (ie, @ted444) will
follow them as well. send a sentence directly to that twitter
“keyword” : user. Unless users are following each
• Each tweet could have a keyword in it, other, they may not see conversations
identifying a word to search on. without being directly addressed.
• When same keyword is used in multiple “tweet” :
tweets, a keyword hit count increases. Communicate a sentence within twitter.
“trend” : Each sentence is truncated to 140
• A high hit count indicates that keyword characters.
is currently trending.

4. Conversation Translated
• In twitter.com, the conversation may • In 5 days, this conversation may show up
show up as as
[pic] Ted @ted44 3m [pic] Ted @ted44 5d
#PatrickDempsey bit.ly/10EzbPr to #PatrickDempsey bit.ly/10EzbPr to
acquire #Tullys acquire #Tullys
[pic] Sue @sb22 2m [pic] Sue @sb22 5d
@ted44 Do you know when @ted44 Do you know when
#PatrickDempsey will be back in #PatrickDempsey will be back in
#Seattle? #Seattle?
[pic] Mark @m33 1m [pic] Mark @m33 5d
@ted44 @sb22 @m33 @ted44 @sb22 @m33
#PatrickDempsey will be in #Seattle on #PatrickDempsey will be in #Seattle on
#Feb1 #Feb1
[pic] Bill @w321 5s [pic] Bill @w321 5d
RT @m33 #PatrickDempsey will be in RT @m33 #PatrickDempsey will be in
#Seattle on #Feb1 #Seattle on #Feb1