Twitter For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Introduction

By now, you’ve heard and seen that all the world’s a-twitter. But you’re probably still scratching your head and thinking “I don’t get it. What’s the point? Why are some people so into Twitter?”

Twitter is a tool that you can use to read and publish short, 140-character messages (often called updates). These updates can come from almost anyone, anywhere: your friends, organizations you care about, businesses you frequent, publications you read, or complete strangers you’ve decided to read.

As a user of Twitter, you get to choose exactly whose updates you want to read — which people you want to follow. In turn, other users can elect to follow your updates. You can post messages publicly for the entire Twitter community, send them privately from one user to another, or, with a private account, post semi-publicly only to users whom you approve. You can view these updates, called Tweets, on any device connected to the Internet.

Twitter has changed and enhanced almost every type of media and community imaginable, from news and sports, to entertainment, to the way that people communicate with friends and companies. Twitter has empowered users to raise money for people in need, coordinate rescue efforts in the wake of a natural disaster, and alert authorities to emergencies and illegal activities both domestic and abroad. Twitter has even powered social and political movements, altering major global events and how (and what) we come to know about them as they unfold.