Twitter

Twitter is an information network made up of messages called “tweets”.  A tweet may contain photos, videos, links and up to 280 characters of text.

If you only wants to read Twitter messages, there is no need to register as a user. Just go to https://twitter.com. TheTwitter page will be displayed. You can then search for whatever you are interested in.

If you do want to send messages, you need to become a registered user. As a registered user you can follow other Twitter users – i.e. see all of their tweets on your “timeline”. You can also be followed by other users.

Twitter has a very good, detailed description of how to use the service at https://support.twitter.com/

These are some tips for making good use of Twitter:

• @ replies: When you start a tweet with an @username, only people who are following both you and @username will see your tweet. If you want more people to see it, just put a full stop or other marker in front of the username.
  If you’re talking about someone on Twitter, use their @username. It’s considered polite and it encourages the people mentioned to share what you’ve posted and further engage with your community.
  The Glebe Society’s username is @glebesociety.
• # hashtags: Hashtags are a shortcut to explain what your tweet contains or to show you’re part of a conversation. Many people (who possibly won’t be following you) follow conversations which use various hashtags. By using hashtags, you’re exposing yourself to a wider audience.
  Some of the hashtags commonly used by the Glebe Society are:
  #Glebe, #Ultimo, #Chippendale
  #Sydney, #Council
  #BaysPrecinct, #WestConnex, #bluewrens
• Retweets (RT): Retweeting someone else’s tweet is a great way to boost your community’s content and make the person retweeted feel good. There are two ways to RT, manually or through Twitter’s RT function. It is good practice to acknowledge the original author of the tweet in the form: “RT @username: Their brilliant comment.”
  Naturally, you need to be careful not to retweet anything which may be offensive or in any way reflect poorly on the Glebe Society.
• Shortening links: Twitter now auto-shortens your links, so there is no need to use a service like Bit.ly to do this.  Some people still use a separate shortening service which allows them to track clicks to their content.