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Today we are going to learn about Twitter and Twitter-related vocabulary in English.

Twitter is a very popular social media outlet in the United States and around the world. If you are used to using Twitter in a language other than English this post will be helpful for you to learn some English vocabulary related Twitter. If you have never used Twitter before in any language this post will help you understand this very popular site and maybe even get you started using it.

To start:
Twitter is a social information network. It is a place where messages are exchanged between friends, businesses, the government, and even strangers.

Messages on Twitter are called “tweets.” Tweets can be no longer than 140-characters in length and they may include a picture or video. Characters include: letters, numbers, and punctuation. As you can see, Twitter is for sending relatively short messages.

You find messages on Twitter on your homepage, which is called a “timeline.”

How does it work:
To use Twitter you have to have an account. Like other social media sites, you create a space for yourself on Twitter so that you can send and receive messages. If you want to receive all the messages a person (or business) sends out then you need to “follow” this person on Twitter. To follow someone means to receive messages directly from them.  If you want to just look some of the messages from another user (not all of them) you can just visit their homepage. There are so many people on Twitter you can’t get everyone’s messages, so you have to select which people you want to receive messages from and follow them. Other people will do the same for you. Some people will follow you so they can see all the messages you post on Twitter.

Who is on Twitter:
Twitter is not just for you and your friends, it is for everyone and everything. There are businesses (like restaurants and clothing stores), public service (like the police and schools), celebrities (people you would like to know or know more about), and news sources (including newspapers, television news, magazines, etc.,). Even your favorite language learning company, Transparent Language, is on Twitter. Check us out at:

@TransparentESL
@TLILanguages

Twitter vocabulary:
Here is some helpful Twitter related vocabulary, some of this vocabulary is presented above, but other words have not yet been introduced in this post.

@ – the ‘at sign’ is often found in front of a person’s Twitter name. If you start a tweet to someone with “@” only the person you send the message to (and the people who follow both of you) will see your tweet. To make the tweet appear on the timelines of everyone who follows you, you have to write something before the “@” sign, or just put a character, like a period “.@” in front of the at sign.

character – a letter, number, or symbol from a keyboard

follow – to follow someone on Twitter is to subscribe to receive all their updates; when you follow someone, every time they post a new message, it will appear on your timeline

handle – your handle is your name on Twitter; for example Transparent Language’s handle is ‘TLILanguages’

h/t = hat tip – this is an abbreviation used to give credit to someone who shared information on Twitter first; for example you might write “h/t @TLILanguages for all this great info”

# (hashtag) – a hashtag is a search tool used to tag (or highlight) key words in current conversations on Twitter; the same hashtag is often used to group together similar conversations about the same subject; you can search for tweets that contain the same hashtag; for example “#springbreak was the best this year”

retweet (RT) – when an original tweet by one person is shared by another person on Twitter this is called a retweet

timeline – your homepage on Twitter; where you will find all your messages or tweets

tweet – a message on Twitter that is no more than 140-characters

If you want to read more about Twitter, here is a great article for you to check out:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/technology/personaltech/twitter-illiterate-mastering-the-bcs.html?_r=0