What are all those con­fus­ing lit­tle words you come across in every other tweet? Has Twit­ter cre­ated a new lan­guage? Twit­ter is becom­ing a cul­ture in itself. Spawn­ing new words, and cre­at­ing new con­cepts around its lingo. For those of you who may be a lit­tle con­fused, this post is meant to clear up some of that inside mumbo-jumbo.

Tweet
What­ever you post at Twit­ter is a tweet.

Tweeps / Tweeple
The peeps or peo­ple on Twit­ter of course.

Twit­ter­verse / Twit­ter­ville
Every­one at Twit­ter. The Twit­ter community.

Twit­terati
The big guys at Twit­ter. Those with more fol­low­ers than you can count in your lifetime.

Tword
Any word pre­fixed by Tw to make it more com­pat­i­ble with Twitter.

RT or ReTweet
ReTweet is a quoted tweet, a repost. You ReTweet when you quote some­one else’s tweet in your tweet.

RT @vtechdirect this is a quoted tweet — this is your com­ment
Where RT stands for ReTweet, @vtechdirect is the orig­i­nal poster you’re quot­ing, the fol­low­ing text is the quoted tweet, and the text after the dash is your com­ment (com­ments are optional).

#Hash­tags

Hash­tags are a way to tag your tweets. They are key­words you use to put your tweet in cer­tain top­ics. You usu­ally use hash­tags when track­ing a pop­u­lar topic. Like if you’re giv­ing updates on web­site design, you’ll use the tag #web­sit­edesign in your update tweets.

DM

DM stands for direct message.

Twit­ter is all about say­ing every­thing in pub­lic time­line, but there are occa­sions when you want to send some a pri­vate mes­sage. That’s when you use a DM.

Method 1: If you want to send a @Friend a direct mes­sage, type it like this: D Friend This is the message.

D at start is to ensure this is a pri­vate mes­sage. Friend is the Twit­ter ID of the per­son you’re send­ing a DM, and the rest is your mes­sage. NOTE: Always use D and not DM at the start of a direct mes­sage or it’ll end up in pub­lic timeline.

Method 2: Switch to “Direct Mes­sages” tab on your Twit­ter page, select a per­son from the drop down menu, enter your mes­sage in the input box, and hit the send button.

Twitter