10 Common Twitter Terms and What They Mean

Twitter has become a viral phenomenon, and the number of users is growing at a dramatic rate. If you are new to Twitter, you may be a little confused with the terminology. Below I have created a list of ten common Twitter terms and what they mean, to help ease you into the land of tweets.

1. Tweet. A message sent via twitter is called a tweet. Tweets can be 140 characters (not letters) in length, meaning spaces and punctuation count.
2. Dweet. A tweet sent while intoxicated i.e. a drunk tweet. Some people may know enough while sending the tweet to label it as such, but most of the time you will see something like “Sorry for the dweet last night!”
3. Hashtag. Using a hash symbol (#) before a tag allows others to follow a particular topic. An example would be “Great time at the #Lakers game” will allow for others to stream the subject of the L.A. Lakers.
4. Nudge. This is a way to notify other users that they should update their status. You can only do this to people who follow you. A person would nudge someone if they think their status is outdated and should be refreshed.
5. Retweet. This is when you post something on Twitter that someone else previously posted. This is a way to forward another person’s message on to your followers and is also commonly used when entering contests via Twitter.
6. Follower. Your followers are the people who have requested to see your tweets. This works in a similar fashion to Facebook friends, accept that if you choose to follow someone, they do not have to be following you. So if you follow your boss, you will be able to see all of their posts, but they will not see yours unless they follow you.
7. Feed. A feed is a list that is constantly be updated as new information appears. If you perform a search on Twitter, your results are a feed of the most recent or popular updates applying to that search. Your homepage is a feed of tweets that have been updated by people you follow, and your profile is a feed of your tweets.
8. Trending. The term trending refers to the most popular topics at any given moment on Twitter. If a national disaster has just occurred or a celebrity just did something outrageous, then it will most likely be trending, as there will be many tweets about it.
9. DM. Short for Direct Message, DM allows you to send a private message to one of your followers without displaying it for public viewing.
10. Handle. Twitter users each have their own unique username or handle that identifies them. This is how you can search for someone to follow, as no two people can have the same handle.

The more people that use Twitter, the more new terms that will come up. In fact, just putting a “tw” in front of any word will make it apply to twitter. If you are waiting in line while tweeting, then you are said to be twaiting. The best way to get used to something is to just jump in and try it. The more you tweet and follow other peoples tweets, the easier it will become.

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