Create a Twitter account

• To create your twitter account, go to the Twitter's website and click the big yellow "Sign Up" button.
• Fill in your info and click "Create my account".
• Once your account is created, login and click "Settings." From here, you can setup your account details, manage your password, register your mobile phone and IM account, configure how you receive Notices, upload your photo and customize your account's design.
• Your Twitter page is located at twitter.com/yourusername (note: 'yourusername' is what you entered as your username during the sign up process.)

Now that you've set up your account, continue reading to learn about sending messages and following other people.

Sending Messages

Once you have signed up for your Twitter account there are a few ways you can "tweet".

• From your Twitter page - Fill out the "What's happening?" box and click the  "Tweet" button.
• From your mobile phone - send an SMS message to 40404
• From your IM account
• Via a third-party Twitter tool
• Via websites that allow you to Tweet your comments or status updates.

Following other Twitter users

Twitter offers 4 ways to find people to follow on Twitter.  At the top of your Twitter homepage, click the Find People link.

• The default tab that first shows up is 'Find on Twitter', which lets you do a name search.
• 'Invite by Email' lets you enter in a list of emails to search for.  This option is useful, because people will often sign up for  Twitter using their regular email address but may use a version of their name that you may not know.
• The 'Find Friends' tab lets you search your address book in Gmail, Yahoo, or AOL accounts
• The 'Browse Suggestions' lets you choose a topic you are interested in and suggests popular Twitterers to follow.  This is useful when you are looking to find out who the influential Twitterers are in your field of interest, what they are tweeting about, and who their followers are.

To follow someone, you simply need to click on their profile picture, and click the Follow button underneath their profile picture on their profile page. If the person you want to follow has a public account, you will immediately start seeing their tweets on your page, otherwise they will need to approve you before you can see their updates.

@Replies and Direct Messages

When you send a tweet with @username at the beginning of the message,all your followers can see the tweet, but it is understood that you are directing the message to a particular user. This is called a Reply.  The person you are sending the tweet to, must be  following you for the message to show up on their homepage, or else the message will show up only to them on their replies tab.  It's better if you send a @reply tweet to someone who is following you because anyone visiting their page will see the message, too.

To send a friend a private tweet, use the Direct command: d username message.  For example:  d maevedonohue Loved your twitter post and i signed up, please follow me

Did you sign up for a Twitter account after reading these instructions?  If not, why not? If yes, leave a comment with your twitter account and we can follow each other.

 

 

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