I am a twitter newbie

The skill I have chosen is using Twitter. I have absolutely no idea how to properly use it. Every news broadcast you watch, every facebook page you read, everyone is on Twitter. Celebrities, presidents, well one we know quite well uses Twitter on a regular basis to keep the internet updated and get his points and views across. Twitter now has 126 million daily users worldwide. The average user is between the ages of 18 and 29. According to reports, Twitter is losing users, but their profits are up. According to sources, the company made $711 million dollars.

My goal is to learn how to use Twitter. I begin by setting up my account, I fill in all the information asked, save it, and there, I have a Twitter account. So, what do I do next? Thank goodness for the help screens. I did it, I have a twitter account. Okay, what do I do next?

First, I have to log into my account. I enter my username and password, and then I log in. On the left, there are a lot of buttons. There’s a home button, a notification button, profile, a lot of buttons. On the right, I see buttons for trends, who to follow. I write books so I need to follow authors, publishing companies. In the search screen, I type in “authors” and a whole list of author names and profiles pop up. My books are non-fiction genres, so I scroll the page to see who writers are in the same genre as me.

I find quite a few so I click on the follow button and up pops their profiles and tweets. I see their tweets but I still don’t know how to send them a tweet. This program is very frustrating for a new user.

When I watch TV I hear a lot of news stories about different tweets that Donald Trump has posted. I am curious and nosey by nature, so I have to click on him to follow. I want to see for myself what he is all about. His supporters just follow him like crazy, others think he’s a raging lunatic; I want to see for myself. It takes mere seconds and wow, there he is, tweets from Donald. He sure has a lot of them.

Another passion of mine is paranormal. I love everything paranormal. I decided to search under paranormal and find a ton of accounts of people who have anything to do with it. I see some of my favourite ones, so I click on follow. Their accounts start showing up. I cannot believe I could actually chat or interact with Chip Coffey, Ami Bruni, Amy Allen from The Dead Files, this is so cool.

I am still unsure of all those icons under their posts and what they mean though. Boy, this isn’t easy to figure out how to use. I make a post asking someone to explain this stuff to me. I don’t get much help back and grow even more frustrated. Next, I decide to check youtube and see if they have any videos on it. There are several so I start watching them.

I decide to send a tweet to Chip Coffey. There is a button that says follow so I click on that, and great, I am following his twitter account. At this time, I can only see Chip’s profile. Each person using twitter controls who they see or don’t see on the newsfeed page. That is the reason for the follow button. Your “home feed” is the page you see when you log into your Twitter account. You can only have you follow, which makes it easier to read the other tweets and it is easier to follow. You can have an unlimited number of followers. You cannot control your followers unless you change your status to private.

Direct Messages (Messages) are private tweets that are exchanged between two users that follow each other. You cannot message someone that does not follow you and vice versa. A retweet is when you want to share a tweet someone else has posted.

Hashtags are used often. I still am unsure exactly what purpose they serve, but I did google and this is what I found. They are a way to label tweets so that other users can see tweets on the same topic. They begin with a # mark. Many times at conferences or concerts, or family events, the attendees use these hashtags to connect everyone together.

To be honest, I still do not understand how this connects, but that is what I’ve read and been told. It makes no sense to me at all. I cannot be bothered wasting my time trying to figure this out. It is not worth it.

Twitter can be a very helpful platform for marketing also. It allows you to advertise your products or services to potential customers. If someone mentions one of your products or services, you can "like" or "retweet" their comment. Reporters and police, fire also use this platform to send out information quickly to a lot of people. It is sent out in real-time.

The retweet button is those two little green arrows that are under the “what’s happening” box. There is a speech bubble to the left of this if you want to comment on the tweet. The heart button is for liking the tweet.

I don’t like the fact that you cannot interact quickly like you can in facebook messenger. It is not as socially appealing to me. I am not a huge fan of twitter. To me, it is like calling someone and leaving a voicemail. When they get or see it they contact you back. Twitter I do go on to follow others, to see the ranting and raving from Donald Trump, that’s about it. It really doesn’t appeal to me, I actually find it boring. With its limited allowance of only 140 characters, it’s unappealing.

Gaynor Jones, Brantford Ontario – authorgaynor@gmail.com