Twitter Vocabulary

Twitter Handle: Also known as a username. This is the name you select to represent yourself.
To Follow: To subscribe to someone’s updates on Twitter. You do this by clicking the “Follow” button on that specific person’s Twitter page, which can be found at
http://twitter.com/USERNAME.
(Insert the specific person’s username into the URL, like http://twitter.com/nowfor2).
When you follow someone, their updates will be displayed on your Twitter page so you know what they are doing.
To Follow Back: To subscribe to the updates of someone who has recently started following you. Whenever a new person follows you, you receive an email alert from Twitter. In the email, there will be a link to that person’s profile. By clicking the link, you can check out who they are and decide to follow them back or not. It is not required to follow everyone back, but many people like to.
Follower: A person who has subscribed to receive your updates. You can see your total number of followers on your Twitter profile page.
Update: Also known as a tweet. They can be no longer than 140‐characters. (Later we will talk about different types of updates.) You post your update in the white text box under “What are you doing?”
@Reply: A public message sent from one Twitter user to another by putting @USERNAME at the beginning of the tweet.
Direct Message (or DM): A private message sent from one Twitter user to another by either clicking the “message” link on their profile or typing D USERNAME.
Twitter Stream: A list of a person’s real‐time updates. Every time you post an update, it goes into your Twitter stream, which is found on your account page also at
http://twitter.com/USERNAME.
Tweet‐up: An event specifically organized for Twitter‐users to meet up and network, usually informal.
Hashtag (#): A tool to aggregate the conversation surrounding an event or theme. Created by combining a # with a word, acronym or phrase (#WORD).
Retweet (or RT): To repeat what someone else has already tweeted. People do this if someone has said something especially valuable and they want their own network to see the information too.