I’m pretty new to Twitter.

I signed up for a free account a few months ago, just because I wanted to see what all of the fuss was about. At first, I thought it was kinda dumb, and maybe a time-waster. Since then, I have made new friends, networked a TON, and I’m learning a lot about improving my blog. Definitely NOT a time waster!

I don’t have an iPhone or any other fancy device. I tweet from my computer desktop. I added TwitterGadget to my iGoogle home page. (You can Google that, by the way. Better yet, Swagbuck it!)

When I first saw the tweets that people were tweeting, I didn’t really get it. What is that # thing? Why does it seem like everyone is at a party, but I was the only one not invited? What is the @ about, and what does RT mean?

Here are some of the basics:

# is a hashtag. It is basically a keyword that you can put somewhere in your tweet so that others who are interested in that topic can see what you are saying. If I click on that hashtag in anyone’s post, it will bring up a list of all of the other references to that hashtag. So, if I want to see what is happening in the #digiscrap or #papercraft world, I can just click on those hashtags when I see them or search for those hashtags in the search box. (Clear as mud?)

It seems like everyone is at a party because there are a LOT of parties on Twitter! I recently attended the #savvyblogging party, and there must have been over 300 people twittering back and forth sharing ideas and winning prizes. It was FUN!! Feel free to jump into a party when you see a bunch of your followers tweeting about one. I love to jump in on the #cricut parties (because I have this dream about owning a digital cutting machine!!).

The @ is a way to reference, call on, or give a shout out to someone. For example, my sweet blogging friend and fellow designer, @pameladonnis has this totally cool blog series she is doing called Rice and Beans 365. She is committing to eating either rice or beans as a part of at least 1 meal a day, and she shares her recipes on her blog! I think this is totally cool, so when I see her tweet about a blog post that she just posted, I can say something like “@pameladonnis, I loved your #riceandbeans post! You rock!” and I typically link up her post and shorten the link so others can see the post I’m talking about. Kind of a cool way to network and share some love, right? Yep.

Another thing I could have done is simply ReTweet Pamela’s tweet. That is what RT means. I click on the ReTweet arrow, and now everyone in MY network can see what @pameladonnis just said. I could comment like this, “Sounds yummy! RT @pameladonnis yadda-yadda” (where she yadda-yadda-ed the best part). Why would I want to do that? Well, because if anyone in my network is interested in #riceandbeans cooking, they will want to know what Pamela is saying, so they’ll want to begin to follow her tweets!

I hope this helped a little! If you decide to hop onto the Twitter bandwagon, be sure to follow me!!

@TipJunkie has some wonderful, informational posts about how to use Twitter in a 3-part series. Go check it out to learn more!

Next up, what in the world is #speedclean?