Twitter 101?

People...I need a lesson in Twitter. I have, like 270ish followers. I follow, maybe 225. How is it that people have thousands, upon thousands of followers? How do you find people, or groups on Twitter? What the heck is Twitterberry, and Tweetdeck, and Twirl, and...? What the heck should I be on???
I am fast becoming a Twitter addict, but I need a basic class in it. Are all these tools to make it more efficient? If so, which one should I use? Holy confused Batman! Please my people share your knowledge...educate me...I need it. Odd don't you think, that I can rock a Twitter page...and be so clueless...

38 comments

  1. I am old school twitter... and scroll through manually to see my friends.

    I do enjoy reading other people's tweets, when I have the time. And I like to get posts, like this, before they get into my reader.

    But as for all the other applications. I. Have. No. Clue. Perhaps it would make it a easier.

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  2. no idea. i need to know for my other project though...because i guess it's really, really good for publicity!!
    i just follow my friends...like you...on my blog twitter profile thing...whatever they call it!!

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  3. Dude how do you even follow 225? I just started this weekend and am only following like 25 people. I have no idea what i'm even doing. I'm gonna be checking back in on the comments to your post to learn a thing or two....

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  4. Oh, no, I only just got on Facebook and I'm now swamped between that and my googlereader. I can't even read everything I hope to read - like this blog for instance!!!!

    By the way, just came over again to tell you how AWESOME you are in helping me at the LAST MINUTE and totally SAVING my rear end on my BLOG DESIGN.

    Now, if you could e-mail me half a brain and a few more hours in the day, I'd almost be useful.

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  5. Wait, my message is lost in the verbage.

    NAPWARDEN ROCKS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    NAPWARDEN ROCKS !!!!!!!!!!!!!

    NAPWARDEN ROCKS !!!!!!!!!!!!!

    I'd twitter that if I knew how. =)

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  6. I use Tweetdeck. It lets me set up groups in columns that I can divide people into. So I have one column for local people so I don't miss their tweets when I don't have time to read through a bunch of tweets.

    I really like Tweetdeck. Much easier to manage all the tweets than paging through on Twitter.

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  7. I like Twhirl. It's not overwhelming like Tweetdeck (where you have this huge grid covering your computer screen) but some people love the organization it offers.

    Twhirl is a pop-up thingy on the side of my screen, it's always open (unless I'm getting too distracted and need to do work and I shut it down for a while) and it dings when a new tweet comes thru. I follow about 300, which honestly is too many. I can't keep up with them all and don't really "know" everyone I follow. I might have to cut back, although "unfollowing" people is kind of rude. But you gotta keep it manageable.

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  8. Tweetdeck is looming on my horizon ;-)
    I just downloaded twitterberry and the only thing cool is that I can update from my phone, but it's not all that great. imo

    Dude, can you rock my twitter page?
    I have more followers than I follow, but that's because I keep getting spammy make money people following me and um. no.
    as for twitter 101? I"m still in pre twitter school :-)

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  9. when you figure it out can you let me know I am so a newbie!

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  10. I am not a good person to ask as I am still relitively new myself. I will be back later though to see what other people have to say. Hope you find your answers.

    You now have one more follower.

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  11. I use tweetdeck (which can be shrunk to one column that you can scroll sideways to view your other columns, or can be expanded to see all at once) and Twitterberry. Twitterberry is a decent blackberry app that will alert me to status updates and also let me post.

    Both of these programs tell me when there are updates. So I am constantly switching over to them to see what was said. It's good because I don't miss much now. But it's also kind of compulsive.

    If you get one of these API programs, that do not force you to use the web site to follow people, be forewarned that your addiction will become unstoppable.

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  12. No twittering for me. I'm on plurk and still confused with it. I have not signed on in awhile. I think I'm getting old to not be able to figure this stuff out. Yikes!

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  13. I would be of no help here. I was hoping to find out in the comments what I should be doing. I have all but quit Twitter because I just can't keep up with it.

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  14. There is no way I can join Twitter. I can barely keep up with my blog much less get started on Twitter. Good luck to ya! ;)

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  15. Well I'd technically be in that 'twitter newbie' category. Though I've been on twitter for a long long time, I have just more than 300 followers and use the Web interface only. (Moreso because I like to tweet while I'm at work and downloading apps onto work machines is a no-no!)

    I recently did a giveaway where people could annc my contest on twitter which bumped my followers significantly. Follow @problogger - he recently published an article on how to up your following. Some pretty basic stuff!

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  16. Twitter is supposed to grow organically. If you really want to follow thousands of people all you really have to do is start following whoever. A good way to find people you might like is to see who your friends (or favorite twitterers or favorite bloggers) are following and follow those people. A lot of people will follow back anyone that follows them and then VOILA! you have thousands in both columns.

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  17. sorry no help here - I have no clue - I don't tweet

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  18. I am not on twitter. I blog and do Facebook...I can hardly keep up with that. Twitter does sound interesting though.

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  19. tweetdeck! tweetdeck! i just discovered it and it's AMAZING!

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  20. haha I have an account but don't know how to use it and somehow have one follower that I don't even know! HA :) Good luck figuring it out.

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  21. Im no help
    I look to YOU to leave the proverbial twitway.

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  22. i'm here to read your comments and learn!!! i have been considering twitter but felt to stupid to get started. ugh. i will be back to read more comments!

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  23. Got to use tweetdeck..you can separate your friends and groups and general follows into different columns making it easier to keep up.

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  24. I like Tweetdeck because it can seperate everything into categories - you know friends and even enemies, if you want. However, I have found that Tweetdeck tends to slow my machine down a bit.

    I like Twhirl also because it works, like Tweetdeck, in that it will notify you every time one of your follows tweets. If I had my druthers, I would stick with Tweetdeck, because it is pretty easy to use. All you need to do is use the link attached with the tweet and it will take you there. :)

    As for finding people, there are several different ways through the search page, email, groups and by name. If you know someone's name that you want to follow, say Rod Blagoxxxx, just enter his name and if he has a twitter account it will pop up.

    Whew! Hope that helps more than confuses. :)

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  25. I don't really twitter. It confuses me. And I have too many addictions as it is...

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  26. I was addicted to twitter for about a month and then I got overwhelmed. I can't keep up with most of my followers!

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  27. well the trick is that you basically follow back anyone that follows. so your #'s should be closer. if someone doesn't follow you back in a few days delete that ass!
    although you don't have to follow say, Sham Wow guy. those are easy opt outs HA!

    you should try out MrTweet http://twitter.com/MrTweet he can show you who isnt' following you back and show you who you are compatible with. (like what friends of yours are friends with whomever else)
    You can follow me, @kagey10 i will follow back. 8-)

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  28. I need to get on the twitter bandwagon but I'm a little lost too.

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  29. I need a class, too! Let me know if you get any great tips... please!

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  30. Here we go NapWarden. I'm cutting and pasting this from your contest post. Yes, I'm a bit of a Twitter junkie.

    TweetDeck & Twhirl are Twitter clients that run on your desktop. Very nice and work a lot better then the web page. Tweetdeck has more features then twhirl, but I think it's a bit bloated and sucks up resources. I mostly use Twhirl.

    Twittberry and Twitterific are apps for cell phones. I use Twitterific on my iPhone...love it.

    Twitterfeed is an automatic service for pushing your blog post automatically to twitter. I use it.

    FriendFeed feeds twitter into Facebook. I use this too.

    Yahoo oneConnect is an app that runs on the iPhone. It allows updates to Twitter & facebook and myspace. It also downloads all of their updates. I use it a little, but you can't reply...that kinda sucks.

    I almost forgot a very important thing in Twitter. Twitpic is a very common way people will upload pictures from their cell phones to Twitter. There are several ways to get the pictures up there, your phone may vary or you can use your desktop. On my iPhone, Twitterific takes care of it for me. Posting the picture and getting my a tiny url as a link.

    Also missed in the other post...any word that you put a # in front of is called a 'hashtag'. You can search on hashtags. There are new services popping up that use these tags to filter messages based on the tags.

    Dang...I should compile all of this for a post on my blog...D'oh!!!

    Hopefully this helps.

    Professional geek, always willing to help!

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  31. First time visitor - popped over here from "The Life and Thoughts of a Midwest Geek"

    Twitter: I just use the web interface, and I only follow a very limited number of people. With too many tweets to read, it becomes very cumbersome to keep up with all of them. And I just don't have the time or energy to try to increase my social circles just for its own sake.

    Tried plurk, not even going to bother with facebook.

    So for my money, keep it simple and let it happen as it does.

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  32. I don't know but for starters follow me and I'll follow you, that is how it is done a lot of the time. I'll click on the "follow you" right now.

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  33. I just downloaded Tweetdeck and am still getting used to it.

    I'm impressed with all your followers!

    What I want to know is what is up with the # signs that people use on Twitter?

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  34. i am totally twitter impaired. it's so sad.

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  35. okay, i joined twitter and i am now following you. i am learning with your via your comments!

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  36. You've got to teach me LOL Wow 200 + that is amazing ....

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  37. I'm also a TweetDeck user. I find it lets me use Twitter more for what I regard it as... the office watercooler.

    I use Twitter for lightweight "networking" if something conveniently comes up, but mostly for touching base with peers and friends to talk about anything we want. It's just like leaning out one's office door or standing around by the copy machine - which is nice for me because I actually don't have any of those things because I work from a home office by myself.

    Tweetdeck organizes all the noise into manageable bits I can stay on top of. I loved Twhirl but it was too singular whereas Tweetdeck is a bit more on steroids. :)

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