Here’s a YouTube video from commoncraft called Twitter in Plain English that they did in March 2008.  This is a great video that helps explain what twitter is and where it resides in your social networking tools.  Enjoy.

The direct message in twitter is a message between you and another person.  It is a private message between you and that person.  However, you need to be following someone in order for that person to send a direct message to you and they need to be following you in order for you to send them a direct message.

If you’re new to twitter and you’re using the main twitter.com site to interact with the people you follow as well as your followers interacting with you, then you can send direct messages using the following sytax:

D <username> <message>

and here’s a real message:

The moment you type the letter D followed by a space in the status update box, the message “What are you doing?” disappears and the words Direct message is displayed above your message.  So twitter senses immediately what you’re trying to do – send a direct message.

The next bit of information you provide for a direct message is the username you’re sending it to.  If you type in someone’s twitter username, it will display after the words Direct message, as seen above.

What Happens Next?

Now, the moment you click on the send button, twitter checks to see if that person exists, if they do, twitter checks to see if they follow you, if they are following you, then the direct message is sent and everything is good.

If the username doesn’t exist, twitter will display a meesage that the user doesn’t exitst.  If the user exists and is not following you, twitter will display a message at the top of your browser that you can send the person a ‘follow username’ message and see if they follow you back.  If they end up following you back, then you can send them direct messages.

Clear as mud?  Good.

Again, if you’re new to twitter, this will be helpful to know but if you’re an old-twitter-timer, then you’ll understand.  However, you could be someone who’s been using twitter for quite sometime through a third-party app and never know how the direct message really works on the main twitter.com site.

Sifting Through All Those Messages

If you’re on facebook, direct messages between two people are like private email messages that are listed in a response/reply list.  This is nice because you can read through the history of your conversation and refer back and forth to what’s been said.  But with twitter, you have a list of all your direct messages in one list from everyone who sends you direct message.  At least on the main twitter.com/#inbox page.

If you find yourself using the main twitter.com page to send and receive direct messages with others, you can use the Direct Message menu selection on the right sidebar.  This will put you on the direct message page where you can view your inbox and sent list of messages between you and the folks you’ve been sending and receiving direct message to and from.

Instead of a flowing stream of messages just between you and one other person, you’ll have to alter between the Inbox and Sent list to see what they’ve sent you and what you’ve sent them under the sent tab.  This is tolerable, unless you send and receive huge amounts of direct message and never read them.  Then it can become overwhelming.

Before I conclude this post, take a look at the drop-down box on the message page.

If you’ve never sent a direct message from here to one of your followers, then they will not be in the drop-down list of followers.  Once you’ve sent them one direct message from this page, then that username will show up in the list.

You’ll also receive email messages of your direct message if you have the Email when I receive a new direct message checkbox checked, under the Settings page and Notices tab as seen below.

There you go.  Everything you need to know about the twitter direct message.

O’Reilly released The Twitter Book by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein – The Definitive Guide to the Planet’s Most Useful & Effective Communications Channel.

The book is 240 pages and jam-packed with twitter goodness.  Topics include:

• Setting up your profile
• Dissecting a tweet
• What following means
• Key twitter terms
• Listening
• Holding great conversations
• Retweeting
• Sharing information and ideas
• Posting personal updates
• Twitter for business
• more, more and more…

Description:

“This practical guide will teach you everything you need to know to quickly become a Twitter power user, including strategies and tactics for using Twitter’s 140-character messages as a serious–and effective–way to boost your business. Co-written by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein, widely followed and highly respected Twitterers, the practical information in The Twitter Book is presented in a fun, full-color format that’s packed with helpful examples and clear explanations.”

The Twitter Book by Tim O’Reilly @timoreilly and Sarah Milstein @SarahM – The Definitive Guide to the Planet’s Most Useful & Effective Communications Channel. Read more about it at their press release page as well.

I got my copy and I’m diggin’ in.

“I’m new on twitter.”  That’s one of the many statements people tweet when they first start out on twitter.  If you’re coming from Facebook or any other social networking site, twitter might be confusing at first or perfectly clear.

You might compare to what you’re used to at those other sites or you might not compare at all because you’re absolutely new to twitter and social networking on the web.

My first reaction to twitter was comparable to some of the following statements and because I came from Facebook where I converse with family and friends, it was hard to start communicating with, well, the whole world.  I definitely felt like a fish out of water.  Here are some common feelings/announcements:

• What’s this twitter?
• I don’t get it
• I need followers
• Anybody there?
• Please follow me
• This is stupid
• This is lame
  
• on and one and on…

By default, Facebook forces people to invite or be invited by people you might know.  There is no following everyone you want to.  You have to add people as a friend and wait for their reply to add you as a friend.  But on twitter, you can find anyone you want and follow them and everyone else can also find you and follow you.  And you all don’t have to follow each other.  In other words, you can follow folks who will never follow you and vice versa.

So if you’re new to twitter, it’s definitely an open world, unless you protect your updates in your twitter Settings page.  Which begs the question, “Why are you on twitter?”  But that’s for another article.

Here are some things to think about (mindset) and do, when you’re starting out on twitter.

1. Twitter is a stream – Twitter is a stream of tweets by many different people from all over the world.  Whether you’re tweeting about family and friends, TV shows, or your favorite food, or all of that, twitter means many different things to many different people.  If you’re new on twitter, just sit back and take some time to read.  How?  Read on.

2. Reading the stream – When you joined twitter, I’m assuming you came to the main twitter.com page and signed up.  If so, here’s a run down of a few things to look at on the main twitter.com page after you’ve logged in.

Look to the right-hand side of the page and you’ll see a Trending Topics area.

Click on one of the topics that might interest you.  Now your page of twitter messages will show tweets about that topic.

So if you clicked on the first topic “Happy Star Wars Day”, your twitter stream of messages will include just those tweets about “Happy Star Wars Day”.  You can save that to your sidebar “Saved Searches” list. Which brings me to…

3. Searching Twitter – Here’s another way to figure out what to do on twitter when you’re new.  Are you interested in cooking?  Maybe cooking pasta?  Or any other topic?

Let’s do a search using the search box in the sidebar to the right of the twitter.com main page.  Enter “cooking pasta” with double quotes and you’ll see all the tweets with the phrase “cooking pasta” in them.

At this point, you could read through some of the tweets and if anyone looks interesting you could send them a response.  Let’s say PastaPatty was a twitter name and PastaPatty just tweeted about “I’m cooking pasta for dinner”.  You could send PastaPatty a message like (without the double quotes):

“@PastaPatty  Sounds delicious.  Care to share your recipe?”

So the @ (at) sign will send this message to PastaPatty.  This is not a direct message where only you and PastaPatty can see.  Other people who follow you will be able to see the message and it could show up in a search for people who are searching on any of those words in your tweet to PastaPatty.  Again, assuming you DON’T have your updates protected.  Note: PastaPatty is fictitious.  I don’t think a twitter accounts has been created with that username.  

You could also tweak the “cooking pasta” search to “pasta recipes”.  That way, you actually might find some pasta recipes.  In both cases, you might want to consider following some of the folks you find in your search if you want to establish a relationship with them or just watch what they have to say.

That’s it!!  Go and play!!  If you liked this article please retweet it with the button below.  I appreciate your support.

In my first article on How To Find Twitter Followers – Part 1, I talked about finding people by using the twitter Find People menu selection.  You can certainly look for typical names of people using the Find People menu selection, but you can also use it to search topical keywords in their twitter username, like Garden.  This is a good way to find people or companies that might be interested in a topic you’re interested in – Gardening.

After you find some folks this way on twitter, you can review their twitter timeline (tweets) and decide whether to follow them and engage in conversation with them about the given topic.  That is one way to find new twitter followers.

However, for this part 2 of finding followers, we’ll look at twitter search which is located at search.twitter.com and twitter advanced search which is located at http://search.twitter.com/advanced.

Searching Twitter

Below is a screenshot of the main twitter search page and way below that is a screenshot of the advanced twitter search page.

As you can see on the basic twitter search page below, there’s one box to enter something you are searching for, kind of like the Google search box.  Nice and simple.  You’ll also notice the Trending topics listed as well.  You can just click on those and find interesting topics and people that you might want to follow.

Now, we can certainly enter a person’s twitter name or using our gardening example, you could enter the keyword garden or gardening, and twitter will look for real-time conversations that include that keyword you’re searching on.

So think about some of the conversations you have with people about the topics you’re interested in and use one or two, or however many keywords or keyword phrases you want to search for.

After twitter returns your search results, you can browse the conversations and decide to follow people, or the results might even include companies that might be advertising gardening products.  So that company might be nice to follow if they’re advertising discounts or valuable tips on gardening.  Typically, folks will follow you back.

If you follow someone from your gardening search results and they reply back, “Why did you follow me?”  Just tell them, “I was looking for people interested in gardening.”

Twitter Advanced Search

Twitter advanced search is really powerful.  As you can see below, there are many parameters to tweak for twitter search for stuff you’re interested in.  Using the gardening theme again, let’s do the following search:

• Type in garden in the All of these words box
• In the Near this place box, we’ll enter Chicago for Chicago, IL
• Select Within this distance of 25 miles.
• We’ll also enter a Search this date and Until this date of 3 days – 4/27/09 to 4/30/09
• And to round this out, we’ll click on the Containing links checkbox, so we can see some interesting links pertaining to gardening and I’ll limit the Results per page to 10 so I can provide a screenshot of the results.

So basically we’re saying, “Show me all the twitter conversations that include the word garden for the last 3 days from twitter usernames in and around Chicago, IL that only contain links.  And only show me 10 results per page.”

Click on the Search button and you’ll see your twitter search results below.

Those are your potential followers.  You can follow some of those folks and most likely they’ll follow you back and then engage in a conversation by sending them @<twitter-username> messages so everyone can see your conversation with them or D @<twitter-username> for direct messages that only you and the person you’re following will see.  Or you can just follow and them and listen to their conversations.

If people don’t follow you back after a certain time period, let’s say a few days or a week, you can certainly unfollow them or use the Your Twitter Karma tool I wrote about in Balancing your Twitter Following and Followers.

Twitter Search Results

If you look at the twitter search results page above, you’ll notice there’s a lot there in addition to your results.  For one thing, if you look at the top of the page, you’ll see the actual search syntax that is used to display your results.  You can adjust your search by altering the syntax in the search box directly if you’d like.

Also, notice that after the page was displayed, there is a yellow status box telling us that there are more results since we ran this search.  You can refresh the page to include the new search results.

That’s it.  Take some time to play around with twitter search and advance search.  It’s a great way find people that are interested in what you’re interested in.

What about you, got any good tips on finding followers or how you use twitter search? Let us know in the comments.

If you like this article, please retweet it using the button below.  I appreciate your support.

As I continue to run into folks who are starting out on twitter or thinking about jumping in, there is still a need to go through the basics of twitter, which I would imagine will last quite some time.  So here are 7 questions about twitter.

1. What is twitter?

Well, there’s many ways to answer this but you can start by reading my What is Twitter? article.  Twitter is many things to many people including people who just want to meet new people.  Businesses who want to advertise and promote their products or service.  Bloggers or website manager who want to drive traffic to their blog or website. Ultimately, twitter is a communications tool that allows people to communicate in 140 character chunks – for whatever reason.

2. How Do I Get Followers?

Well, you’ll have a chance to invite your friends who are in your email account(s) when you first setup your twitter account.  Read my article Twitter: Still Trying to Get the Hang of It? and How to Find Twitter Followers – Part 1.  Basically you can just start by typing a word or words in the Find People menu selection of  an interest you have.  For instance, “Miley Cyrus” is a celebrity who has a ton of fans.  After you’ve typed in and search for “Miley Cyrus” you’ll have a list of tweets that other people have sent out in twitter.  Now you can read through those tweets and the profiles of who sent those tweets.  If you like what someone tweeted, then follow them, they just might follow you back.  

3. Who Sees My Messages on Twitter?

The moment you send a message out, what has come to be known as a tweet, it goes out to the whole twitter universe.  Even if you don’t have followers or a just a few, twitter will be able to search what you just tweeted.  So if someone is searching on twitter using search.twitter.com for “Miley Cyrus”, your tweet will show up in the search results if the tweet was, “Hi, I’m new on twitter and I’m looking for other Miley Cyrus fans.”

4. Should I Respond to Everyone on Twitter?

No.  You’ll get to a point that you can’t respond to everyone and maybe you don’t want to.  When someone sends a tweet out and you are folloiwng them, you’ll see their tweet on your twitter page of messages.  You can respond to it if you like, whether it’s directed at you or not.  It’s just like a conversation.  Feel free to converse with the twitter folks you follow and your followers.

5. What’s a Direct Message?

A direct message is a message that is sent to only you and can only be seen between you and the sender.  You don’t have to respond to a direct message if you don’t want to.  You’ll notice in the right sidebar your Direct Messages link and count.  You can always click on that link to see your Direct Messages on the Direct Messages page.

6. How Do I Reply to Someone?

Whens someone sends you a direct message, you can view it on your Direct Messages page discussed above.  On the Direct Messages page, hover your mouse over the top right of the message and you’ll see an envelope appear.  Click on the envelope and the person’s name will pop into the drop-down list at the top of the page and your cursor will pop into the message box waiting for you to type and send a message.  This will be a direct message back to that person.  So only you and that person will see it.

If you want to reply to anyone on your twitter stream, you do the same thing on your main twitter page, hover your mouse over the top right of the message and you’ll see a curvy arrow you can click on.  This will put the person’s twitter name in the message box with an @ sign in front of their name, and the cursor will be waiting for you to type and send a message.

If you look in the right sidebar, you’ll also see your twitter name with an @ sign in front of it.  This will show you all the tweets that have been sent out in the twitter stream with your twitter name.

If you click on a person’s picture, you’ll be taken to their twitter page where you’ll be able to see that person’s twitter information as well as send them a direct message using the message link in the right sidebar under the Actions section.

7. Can I Use Twitter on My Cell Phone?

Yes.  If you look under your Settings menu selection you’ll see a tab called Devices.  Save your phone number and you’ll be able to receive tweets as well as reply to those tweets.  They do have a check box that indicates, “It’s okay for Twitter to send txt messages to my phone. Standard rates apply.”

That’s it for now.  There’s plenty more twitter basics to talk about and we will in future articles.  If you liked this article, please retweet using the button below.

Also, if you have any beginner questions please leave it in the comments for everyone to see.  If you have anything to share for twitter users who are just starting out, please leave a comment about it.  Thanx!!

In my prvious article How to Find Twitter Followers – Part 1, I mentioned that you should unfollow people who don’t follow you after a few (3-4) days.  You can always reconnect with them later.

The point of this is to keep your following and followers numbers reasonably close or at least more followers than you are following.  For example, one rule twitter has is, you can’t go over 2,000 following if you don’t have at least 1,800 followers.

So you’ve followed a ton of people and I told you to unfollow folks who don’t follow you back after a few days (3-4). How are you supposed to unfollow all those people easily? Certainly I don’t want you to find every single person who you’re following, one by one, and figure out which ones to click unfollow, am I?

No. Go to this site – You Twitter Karma. At Twitter Karma, you’ll be able to login to twitter and click on the “Whack” button. This will start the process of retrieving all the folks you follow on twitter.  You might make it a bit faster if you click on the “Hide avatars?” checkbox.

Once the list of followers come back, click on “Only Following” in the “Show” drop-down list. This will display just the folks who you are following and they are not following you back.

Now scroll to the very bottom of the list and click on the “Check All” button. Then click on the “Bulk Unfollow” button. Viola!! That’s it. Your Twitter Karma will unfollow all those folks that you follow but they don’t follow you. Now Your Twitter Karma is balanced.

Like I said, do this every 3-4 days when you get started and as you reach the 2,000 following, 1,800 followers mark.  I do this on Sunday and Wednesday evenings.  Of course, you don’t have to do this at all if you’re Oprah or if you have more followers than people you’re following.

That’s it!!  If you’ve found this article helpful, please considering retweeting it with the button below.  I appreciate your support.

A common phrase I hear on twitter is “I need followers”, or some form of that phrase.  Well, here’s one way to find folks on twitter who might follow you.  For this article I’ll use the keyword garden.  So we’re going to assume you like gardening and you’re looking for more folks to connect with on twitter about gardening.  Cool.  Let’s go.

Find People

You can click on the Find People menu selection and type in a keyword there.  So we’ll type in garden.  Feel free to experiment with a keyword you’re interested in.

After typing in garden in the “Who are you looking for?” box, 359 results of twitter users are returned who have the word garden in their twitter name.

Now, you can choose to follow a page or two of these gardening twitter-ers by clicking on the follow button next to their names or you could just pick out a few that look interesting, read their tweets and decide whether to follow them or not.

Most likely you’ll get some of those folks to follow you.  If others that you’ve followed don’t follow you after a few days (3-4), then unfollow them.  Don’t worry,  it’s not a cruel thing to do, you can reconnect with them later.  We’ll look at the whole following/followers balancing act later.

Here’s a killer way to put this into hyper-drive.  If you find someone that you follow and really like, then look at their followers by clicking on the followers link below the number of people who are following them.

This is a great way to just start following a page or two worth of folks and see if they follow you and what their talking about.  Hopefully they’re talking about what you’re interested in – gardening.

Now, you can use this technique with whatever topic you’re interest in, whether you’re looking for new friends, doing research, well, you get the idea.

Rules of the Twitter Road

As you start following people on twitter, don’t over do it and start following a ton of people right away.  Twitter doesn’t seem to like people growing their account too fast, which could lead to your account being suspended.  So as a general rule to start, follow up to 50 people a day and see if they follow you back.  Later, you can increase this number as you gain more followers.

If people don’t follow you back, unfollow them after 3-4 days to keep your following and followers in balance.  There’s not a perfect science to this and I don’t know the exact number until you get upwards of 2,000 followers  that twitter starts placing rules on this balance.

Don’t be disappointed when you unfollow your favorite people if you have to.  You can always reconnect with them later or they you.

So that’s it.  Start building your followers, contribute to the conversation and have fun.

Please retweet this article with the button below if you find it helpful.  I appreciate your support.