I had already registered for a Twitter
account years ago but have neglected to look at it or set it up properly until preparation
for the Final started. When I signed up I had to give the site my email, name
and a password and setup of my account from there after confirming registration
through my email account.
Twitter provides users with a help
center called ‘Twitter Basics’ which helps new as well as experienced users
with any problems they are having with the website. General Twitter news to how
to follow new people is posted in this area. A lot of online support is
available in this area of Twitter but the Twitter Tour, a tutorial of how to
use Twitter basically takes all of this information and puts into an
interactive tutorial. One of the first things I did was take the Twitter Tour
offered as it was the clearest course of action for someone with minimal knowledge
about the site.
These are some of the basic things
that the Twitter Tour teaches users about:
Dashboard: The tutorial explains
that tweets from who a user follows appear on the right and that the user can
expand them to show conversations resulting from these tweets.
Tweeting: A user can also tag
someone they know in a tweet by typing in “@friendname”. They also have the option
to add a location to their tweets. For instance if they went to a concert and would
like to tweet a picture they can include the location of the concert in the
tweet, all location a user tweet overtime are saved and frequently tweeted
locations can easily be found without having to re-search them.
Connect: Twitter has provided users
with an Interaction tab in the Connect section of the site which allows a user
to view when others have tweeted about them, followed them or re-tweeted about
something the original user did. This allows a user to see how they as an
individual (or what they tweet) is being received by others.
Discover: The Discover page on
Twitter is a tab at the top of the website along with Connect and Home. The
Discover page is a page which provides trending information that is specific to
a user’s connections, location, language settings and recent spikes in Twitter
topics. For instance, today, May 20, a big topic on Twitter is the death of Bee
Gees member Robin Gibb and appears as such on my Discover page. The Activity
bar on the Discover page allows a user to view what the people you follow have
been up to and re-tweeting.
Search: A user can search for people
or things to follow through key words, user name, email, phone number or
hashtags. Using Twitter’s search engine a user can search any of these things
to find specifically what they would like to follow. For instance, typing in
Stephen King brought up his Twitter page, SoStephenKing.
Profile: A user can view and edit
their profile through the profile button at the top of any Twitter page. Users
can also send and receive direct messages from this drop down menu at the top
of the page.
One last and vital thing I learned
while setting up my Twitter account today is that a user can actually connect
their Twitter account to their Facebook account. A large part of my Final
Project is connecting how Twitter is better than Facebook in some areas and why
some people choose it over the much more popular social networking site. Because
the two can be connected I believe that this flow of power to users between the
two is not as cut and dry as I thought it would be; therefore when researched this
aspect will be subjective and there will not be just one correct answer.
I too had set up an account a long time ago but was not impressed with tweeting. I feel like the site is too commercial and less social. I did not know that you could link your facebook and twitter accounts, I find that curious.
ReplyDeleteTracie