OK, so in part one we covered the very basics of twitter. Now it’s time to make it work more easily and efficiently.

Twitter has a concept called “lists”, which are both very useful and rarely used. You can follow entire lists from other people or organisations with one click, which is very useful when you’re starting out/very interested in a subject, but that’s not how I use them, TBH – I like to pick and choose who I follow. I have just two lists – a-list, b-list. It’s pretty simple stuff – people/organisations I follow where I don’t want to miss anything they say go on the a-list. Stuff I like to keep across but isn’t critical goes on the b-list. Whenever I make a new follow, they always start off on the b-list, then I move them up if I decide I’m hunting around for them in the b-list.

So it’s basically priorities – A is high, B is other.

I used to have a multitude of lists – family, media, footy, friends, other sport, photography, music, etc, but it was pointless – way too hard to keep a track of. This way is simple, and it works a treat.

The other reason it works so well is that I don’t use the twitter page to use Twitter, I use a program on the computer called “Tweetdeck“. Tweetdeck is a Twitter “client” – it uses Twitter, but you don’t have to go to the Twitter website. Tweetdeck allows you to watch a variety of twitter functions – lists, mentions, direct messages, saved searches – all on the one screen. It makes twitter really usable and useful.

Tweetdeck was bought by Twitter a while ago, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens, but at the moment, it’s the best method I’ve found.

Tweetdeck is also available on iOS and Android. Again, I like it on Android because it’s nicely list-centric, and because all of my account, list, saved search information is available on the phone just as it is on the PC because I’m logged in to Tweetdeck. it also allows you to easily switch between accounts to post from, which is really useful if you have personal and business accounts.

Searches – if, say, you’re a photographer, you could search on #photo, and watch that in a column on Tweetdeck. Or #afl. Or #gotiges. Or #cricket. Pretty much, if you can think of something, somebody is tweeting about it and you can join in.

Tweetdeck also makes it easy to filter or search on each column to make finding content/posters easier, and it has a global filter which allows you t o block particular words, posters, etc. They haven’t bothered to make that easy to use at all, so it’s a bit of a PITA.

If I think of anything else, I’ll come back and add it

So, enjoy twitter. Remember, it’s not Facebook and isn’t designed to be – as long as you treat them differently, they’re both rewarding experiences.

OK, so what is Twitter?

Twitter is a short-form broadcast service. “Short-form” because it’s limited to 140 characters, “broadcast” because it’s you sending a message to the world. All of it – not just your friends like Facebook, but everyone. A point worth remembering. (Here’s a recent example of a tweet ending up in the High Court in London.)

Some people tend to talk of Facebook and Twitter in the same breath, lumping all they know of that trendy term “social media” into the same basket. But it just doesn’t work like that – Twitter is about broadcasting, Facebook is about conversing. Kinda. Twitter is much more like a radio station, while Facebook is like a discussion around a pretty big table. People can ring into the radio station and comment, but there’s much more of a conversation around the table, because the environment suits it better, but you only join in if you feel like it.

Anyway, on to Twitter itself.

On Twitter, you “follow” people, and/or they follow you. “Follow” simply means that you’re interested in what they say, so you “follow” them and their tweets will show up on your twitter page. If you discover that you aren’t interested, just “unfollow” them. Dead easy.

You can set up a personal twitter account (which most people do), and you can have a business/organisation one as well. For example, I am @mickeyjuice while my photography is @juiceimaging and the website/forum I run with @blackshadow is @makingimagesau. As you can see, we’ve got accounts for ourselves, our businesses and the website/forum.

Ok, so there’s a lot of “@” signs there. That’s the twitter way of saying “this isn’t a random word, this is a person/business/organisation”. So any tweet with @juiceimaging in it will prompt twitter to let me know that I’ve been tagged in a tweet. Yeah, it sounds weird but it does make sense – one of the things it does is allow you to ‘tag’ people in a tweet, so that the person knows that you are talking to them (among others). So if someone is replying to me, then ‘@mickeyjuice’ will (generally) be at the start of the message, and I’ll know it’s directed to me.

Also, we can have stuff like #juiceimaging. (“#” is a “hashtag” in twitter speak.) It’s not tagging the person, but the idea, so anyone can join in and follow the hashtag, irrespective of who tweets it, and whether you follow them or not.  A good example is something like #afltigersfreo, which can be used to follow the AFL match between Richmond and Fremantle – anyone posting with that hashtag will show up in a search on it, so you can follow the flow of comments from people watching the Tigers give the Dockers a fair old belting. That’s obviously a pretty short-term one, but longer term would be #gotiges”, which is the “official” hashtag of the Richmond Football Club. (“Official” as in it’s the one they decided to use for themselves, it’s not assigned by anyone as such.)

Hashtags can be really useful to follow – as in when the news was coming out that Osama Bin Laden had been killed by US Special Forces, the following hashtags got a good workout: #osamadead #osamabinladen  #osama #september11  #osamabinladen #waronterror  #alquaeda #osamabinladendead.  Hashtags can be great deal of fun to follow – favourite band, football team, cooking style, whatever. Searching on any of them let you see what anyone using that hashtag was saying. There’s a photo website that’s new to me (and most people – it’s good, so I follow the #500px hashtag to keep up with what’s going on over there, and also to let others following that hashtag know when I’ve posted a new image.

Sometimes, you want to say something to just one person – as long as you are both following each other, you can send a “direct message”. Assuming the twitter servers don’t burp (either immediately or somewhere down the line) then it’s a private message. This is useful for contacting someone, but NOT telling the world about it. (i.e. something like “Mate, got a washer and dryer here in Collingwood if you need to get stuff clean/dry” to a friend whose washing machine has died – no need to pollute the twitterfeed with it, so send it as a DM.

Part II HERE.