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Follow us on Twitter and receive regular updates, including the latest news and jobs as well as updates on pictures of Bracknell Forest submitted to our Flickr website.
What is Twitter?
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates via SMS, instant messaging, email, to the Twitter website, or any one of the multitude of Twitter applications now available.
Twitter asks the question, 'What are you doing?' and allows you to send a small update (limited to just 140 characters) to people who follow your twitter. You can send and receive updates (also called tweets) via your browser, email , instant messaging clients and SMS so you can keep in touch no matter where you are.
For more information see:
How do you join?
Simply go to twitter.com and sign up. It is an easy to use, free service.
What is the difference between Twitter and Facebook?
Unlike other social networking sites, it is not about connecting with people you know, its about following people that interest you. In Twitter you choose whose updates to ‘follow’. Most people begin with a circle of friends but many find that they break away from this once they become regular users.
Twitter Tips
- Find some people to follow: Use the find people feature or search for subjects (go to search.twitter.com) that you might be interested in. Check the profiles of people who are following other who you follow. Try out a few. Then start posting to your updates. Don’t expect many to follow you immediately. It may take some time and those you follow do not automatically follow you.
- Keep it short and sweet. Quality matters more than quantity when it comes to ‘tweeting’, so don’t use your 140 characters every time. Use Tiny URL to turn long web addresses into short ones that do not clutter up your titter page.
- Observe the etiquette. If someone that you follows posts an interesting update or link, copy and paste it into your update box with RT (retweet) at the start and post it.
- Reply to someone by putting @ at the front of the name of the person your are responding to. Even if they are not following you they are alerted to your post. Remember that everyone can see these. If you want to message someone privately put a D or DM in front of the name and then your message.
- Try Twitter applications developed by others, for example:
- Tweetdeck - Takes tweets and makes them into more manageable bite sized pieces.
- Twitterfeed - Lets you feed your blog to Twitter
- twhirl and Hellotxt - Let you update your status and read your friends' status across all main microblogging and social networks all at once
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