So I’m old, I’ll admit it, specially for a programmer type. I’ve delved into the world of Twitter, only long enough to add a plugin to a friends site and make it work with a Twitter application. It was time to figure out how the tweets work and what’s a hashtag and the purpose of the @.
I am still a rank beginner but as far as I know, the @name directs your tweet to a specific person, it shows up as an “interaction” on that persons Twitter page (under the @Connect tab, or a special mention on their Tweetcaster (on the Android). That’s nice. Not private like an email message or a facebook message, nut something they might see amid the myriad tweets.
The hash tag is less personal. It looks on first glance that it simply adds your tweet to a long list of tweets also including that tag. However, it could be useful. You can search the hashtags, for All (the Twitter world, you will get a lot of hits with a tag like #swimming), people you follow; this will be very small if you don’t follow anyone 😉 ), or Top (I’m guessing this is about rankings and statistics, more followers/retweets higher rank, closer to the top). Then this ties in to the Trends, or the other new term, What’s Trending. Twitter has volunteered a group of hashtags for my benefit. At the moment this list is as follows:
#ACI
#RHCFOBusinessBreakfast
#BSR13
#Roadmap2013
#voteaustinmahone
Official Video
Christmas
New Music
Starbucks
I have no idea what the #hashtag entries are. I have heard of the others, but why are some hashed and others not. Well, it seems that there are outside services that will specifically follow hashtagged words. However, within Twitter you can search a phrase whether or not it is so tagged. You are given the opportunity to Tailor this list. However, some things will appear here regardless of tailoring if deemed important or popular according to those you follow and/or location.
Looking further at the home screen, it looks like you can send a private message in Twitter, though it stops at 140 characters. That seems to be a trend.  I also got the connection between Twitter and facebook to work. The practise Tweet showed up on my facebook page, much to the dismay of my “friends”. Not to worry, I’ve disconnected them again. Not ready to be so public  🙂  (ok I really should go beyond the three emoticons, maybe for another day).
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