The question is often asked, maybe not by kids, but it amounts to the same, in as much as, if you are a user (or addict) of Twitter, the question is asked and it seems so obvious to us, only up to the point that we start to explain it to a non-Twitter user.

Yes, surprising as it seems, there are people who don’t know what it is.

On French TV, “Envoyé Special”, an investigative journalism program, made up of 2 or 3 hot-news stories that goes out on Thursday evenings did a spot on Twitter three weeks ago (at the beginning of 2010), talking about the ‘new’ revolution that is Twitter.

Needless to say, the take-up is slower in France than in the USA or the UK.

That said, I meet a lot of people who have either never heard of Twitter or whom suppose it is another Facebook – any websearch on France will tell you that Twitter is seldom or little used by the French – (although that is now starting to slowly change in 2011).

OK, so what is Twitter?

Put simply, Twitter is a microblogging platform that allows members, joining being free, to send open or private messages, theoretically to 26 million users worldwide (at the time of writing), the reality is somewhat more conservative, and is often reliant on the number of followers that one has and the topic, or the “trending topic” of the message sent.

When talking about a blog, people generally have a vague idea (although some don’t really see the point in it) but the notion of a “microblog” tends to send their faces into contortions of puzzlement and is often greeted by the question, “why do that?”

Fair point and perhaps one that we all once thought about before being sucked-into the addiction that is Twitter – you’re not addicted? Ok, but how many hours / days can you go before logging-on for your fix?

So how does it work?

First of all sign-up for an account, fill-out your profile with the information that you will allow the world to know and upload an image or a photograph – your avatar, which will appear at the head of each message you send and also be open to be consulted by anyone who is interested in finding out about you.

The information given is purely at one’s own discretion, some give their professional details, some give a witty “bio”, others give a scant bio, like “in your dreams” as the geographical location and a few enigmatic words about themselves whilst some leave all of this blank.

Most people will advise you to at least fill out a minimum of the bio and where you live.  It’s fairly logical to equate all that is done on Twitter to real life, as in fact, it is indeed, real life and conversations in real life usually include giving and receiving information during the course of a conversation.

It is also logical that we are drawn to people who have similar interests or points of view as ourselves, the geographical situation can also stimulate curiosity or a certain feeling of commonality if we interact with people who live near ourselves, or, conversely at the other end of the world.

A message or a tweet, is a mini-message, made-up of 140 characters, including punctuation and spaces – the 140 characters stemming from the maximum allowed characters in an SMS message.

When non-Twitter people learn this they immediately imagine messages peppered with “SMS speak”, and , although there are people who do write their tweets thus, there is a majority of tweeters who use complete words and punctuation without reverting to abbreviations or shortenings by way of, “CU in 2”, although the desire to get as much information in a tweet will mean that this is sometimes unavoidable.

Sceptics will immediately cite the erosion in standards and the fact that language is being bastardised, by teenagers who can’t even write without the help of a computer and a spellchecker – the truth is, that, although the average age of Twitter users is over 35 years old, teenagers make up only 11% of users – equal to the number of 54 to 65 year old tweeters.

We could argue that the 140 character limit actually helps tweeters to be more succinct and curb the tendency to waffle – there is quite a thought process into writing a tweet: planning what will be said, a certain level of empathy in respect to the way that it may be received, care over typos and spelling (although slips of the fingers on the keyboard are inevitable) and imagination in respect to the target of our tweets, as after all, most of us have never met the people we are interacting with and never will.

The next point is to get followers – sounds strange when you first hear it, being stalked by people we barely know or amassing a group of disciples for our proselytising tweets, which is often, but not always a reciprocal process – you follow and get followed (or the reverse).

Why do you need followers?

Good question.Followers are your personal ‘community’, the people who can automatically receive your tweets in their timeline (that being the scrolling list of messages received).

When you follow somebody and they follow you back you receive their  tweets and they receive yours.Following is easy, you see someone who looks interesting, or whose Tweets interest you and you choose to follow, which is not a dynamic process, you only receive their messages, but if they choose to follow you back, then you are also able to send and receive private messages, visible to the two of you only – called Direct Messages or DM’s. Most people send a thank you, DM when they are followed, although a large majority of the ‘thank you’s’ are in fact automatic messages triggered when the person’s account is followed.

Twitter is, by definition, a form of social media which enables and encourages social interaction by way of conversations through tweets – metaphors abound to compare Twitter to a virtual lounge, bar, water-cooler or coffee machine, and these do actually exist through the “hashtag” prefix, but we will see this later.

The social side of Twitter must, however, be understood in the broadest terms – some people use it to make friends, ‘friendships’ that are sometimes so tangible that the word isn’t really out of place, others use it to promote their interests, their business, a cause or purely for “in-you-face-marketing” or “selling snake oil”.

I would guess that most tweeters have heard of “The Trump network”, a way to get “white teeth discovered by an unemployed single mom” or “cash gifting” or other such methods to push a message right into the face of anybody who happens to have these tweeters in their timeline – ooh, I see a lot of people unfollowing me after reading that, it’s not important…

As in all things in life, one must take the rough with the smooth, there are a majority of well-meaning, interesting informative and genuine people that counterbalance the scammers and the spammers – thankfully, which make the whole Twitter experience worthwhile, but once again that is a purely personal sentiment – cue the unfollowing ..

There are ways to amass vast numbers of followers which are often somewhat controversial – signing-up and paying for software that sends regular automatic tweets, auto-follows users, sign-up and pay to be auto-followed as soon as a new user joins Twitter, which can be attractive to those that are more interested in the quantity of followers they have with little regard to building relationships and the interest that is contained with the tweets.

When I see people jump from-one day-to-the next to over 200 followers overnight, it makes me wonder, why do that?

Is it the kudos of having vast numbers of followers or is it just another vehicle for spams and scams – I often think it is a mix of the two.

So, we’ve got our account up and running, filled out our bio and uploaded a photo, we have a few followers, although we may not immediately know why these people have chosen to follow us, so let’s find out why – let’s join the conversation.

There are certain unwritten rules that govern the etiquette of tweeting, which are all so obvious that they are perhaps not worth mentioning, but as with all things common sense, the questions are so important that they are inevitably overlooked.

Relationships, courtesy, politeness and a certain regard for others are so important on Twitter, at least in my eyes.

I personally hate the use of bad language and racism or other isms and will immediately unfollow anyone that I see doing this in their tweets.

It is not that I am in any way a prude or a puritan, but I feel that there is a certain level of respect that should be shown to others and this does not include any of that – basically treat others as you wish to be treated yourself.

Think of it as a reflection of the physical real life, you are in a crowded room, how would you go about interacting with others?

Well, you wouldn’t go and shout about your business and products straight in people’s faces and repeat the message at the top of your voice every 3 minutes, now would you?

Oh, you would – let’s see how long people stay around you… You wouldn’t butt-into a conversation with two or more people and give your opinions without being asked first or invited to join the conversation would you? Hmm, ok.

People generally have the skill of demonstrating their true personalities through their tweets and it is fairly easy to detect warmth, animosity, ambivalence, aggression and virtually (sic) the whole range of human emotions, even though the greater part of tweeting is left for the decoding and the interpretation of messages by the reader.

Written communication is a minefield for misunderstanding – “we see the world as we are and not as it is” – writing a tweet with an ironic tone can sometimes backfire when it reaches the destination and is interpreted directly as aggression or sarcasm – some tweets are saved by the bell in the form of LOL (laughing out loud), ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing), PMSL (work it out for yourself) or pseudo-emoticons in the form of punctuation marks – ;-) (smile and a wink), :-) (smile) :-(sad face) or :-p (smiling out of the corner for the mouth), to show but a few.

The brevity of tweets can also lead to misunderstandings, there is a quite an art to crafting a message through a tweet with a 140 character limit – some do it impeccably, others need work!

All I’m saying is, that there are certain conventions to adhere to and if you don’t then you won’t be in the conversation for too long.

Twitter is about giving, and this too becomes reciprocal, give information, help, hints and tips, as you would in any face-to-face conversation and the results will be similar.

On the other hand, taking without giving will generally be treated in kind.

Twitter is a conversation, or more correctly a multitude of conversations going on concurrently  – just ask yourself if you are ready to or want to join-in with the conversation, it’s not rocket-science.

People can promote their business, their interests or causes close to their hearts on Twitter – it is not taboo, but there are ways and means – generally governed by self-awareness and etiquette – the ideal scenario is when people start taking an interest in your business without you having to blare it out in their faces.

By the same token, imagine a three-way conversation where one of the parties didn’t answer any of the social intercourse questions such as, “What do you do?”, “Where do you come from?” “What interests do you have?” having a blanket draped over their head to hide their features- this is personally how I imagine people who have a standard Twitter avatar and no bio – like why do that?

Another reason for a good bio is that Google indexes Twitter pages

I’ve heard people on twitter say that information on Internet is not safe so not having a bio is safer – well, OK,this may be true, but you only put what you choose in your bio, you don’t need to include your blood group or bank account number – come on, get real!

Taking this aspect to its logical end, one wonders why these people, who are perhaps ever-so-slightly paranoid sign up for Twitter accounts – If I were them, I’d lock all of my doors and windows, draw the curtains and keep the lights off – much safer.

Some ways to get new followers is to do a search by keywords, I am particularly interested in Lifelong Learning, a keyword search with these terms will throw up anyone who has these terms in their bio – so another good reason to have a good clear bio – if only to incite the interest of others, who may in turn, be interesting.

Another “tradition” on Twitter is the “Follow Friday” where an #FF prefix is added to a list of users that we recommend others to follow – this is one of the ways of showing some recognition to fellow tweeters that we find interesting, engaging, or in some way, worth being followed for the quality of their tweets.

There is also a lot of value to following #FFs from trusted tweeters that we follow.

“Retweets” or RTs which is re-publishing a tweet from somebody that a reader finds interesting, amusing, informative or even controversial in order that others get another chance to see the tweet again, as this also draws the attention to both the tweet and the author – this is another way of passing on positive “strokes” to people you follow and is encouraging for the author of the tweet.All replies are preceded by the @ followed by your username, so a Follow Friday for me will resemble “#FF @combi31” – and then hordes of people will follow me ;-)

Courtesy also dictates that we thank people for #FFs or RTs or @mentions – as we would to anyone who did us a favour outside of the Twitterverse – a quick RT or “thank you” does the trick.

Virtual coffee bars, pubs or bars such as #elevensestime or #frys or #thevic preceded by the hashtag are where people can interact with conversation whilst sharing virtual drinks and food – yes, the imagination gets really worked on Twitter, it just means that precedding a message with a hashtag and the name of the “establishment” ensures that the messages end up in the search bar of anyone who includes this in their messages – and they are often quite convincing.

Hashtags are also used in the trending topics, which show up in the trending search for the most popular discussion of the moment – things like #sixnations or #eastenders will ensure that your messages ends up in the trending searchbar of anyone who uses the Twitter web client or who adds a searchbar to their particular Twitter client, but more about Twitter clients later.

Within tweets we can also send web link URLs which can also be shortened either automatically by a Twitter client (we will have a brief look at this later) or through services such as TinyUrl to save those vital character spaces.

Photographs can be uploaded and shared via Tweetphoto, connect and share our tweets on face book, include out timeline and tweets on a WordPress or other blog or website.

We can also place a badge “Follow me on Twitter” on webpages or blogs, as well as our Twitter timeline, which enables people to follow us if they have stumbled upon our blogs or sites by chance.

The background of our Twitter webpage can be customised easily or free backgrounds with advertising messages from the creators can be easily installed to personalise our homepage.

The text box of a tweet asks “What are you doing?” some answer this literally and give minute details as to what they are eating etc., which some people find annoying, I don’t personally, as they are sharing details of their lives and it is an answer to the question, which, more often than not will receive a reply or a question which, in turn, triggers interaction and conversations.

Some people will divulge their most personal secrets and information on Twitter in an almost cathartic display of offloading to strangers or friends – some of these are quite eye-opening at times and if we are not directly involved in the conversation can bring about an almost uncomfortable feeling of voyeurism, one can only hope that it serves some sort of therapeutic end.

Twitter can be used as a way of offloading, connecting, inquiring or informing – the way that it is used is totally up to the individual user – some people prefer to lurk and to follow conversations without interacting, that too, is their choice.

Twitter Clients

There are a host of twitter clients available freely, a Twitter client being the software that either sits on the web or on your own computer. I personally use Tweetdeck on my mac and on my iPhone but sometimes the Twitter web client – there are many others including:

• Twitterfeed
• Tweetdeck
• Tweetie
• Twitterifc
• Twitterfox
• Hootsuite
• Twitterberry

To name but a few. There are also a host of tools that can be used to enhance your Twitter experience, some are detailed in another blog post on this site – there are the “must-haves” and the “Nice to haves”, although for most purposes the web client or Tweetdeck is sufficient.

I joined Twitter purely out of curiosity and was ready to give it up after a day or so and uninstall the software from my computer – this was in July 2009, I am writing this post in March 2010 and am really enjoying the Twitter experience – I have people that I interact with daily and others from time to time.

It is clear that Twitter is changing the way that people communicate, in and out of business – I saw a recent study in businesses which use Twitter who have actually cut-back on the volume of mails sent and received in their organisations since using Twitter.

I personally use an Open Source form of microblogging not dissimilar to Twitter in my work with companies, creating, running and installing Lifelong Learning solutions across organisations, which is often initially met with many shaking heads due to the superfluous nature of information sharing via other social networking sites such as Facebook and the ever present email.

The experiences that I have been through have been surprisingly opposite to this and microblogging has served to unite people across organisations on common projects and actually acted as a governor, limiting the volume of emails and not significantly increasing the flow of information in the organisation.

I use Twitter with two accounts, one is purely for fun and the other is used to interact with people and send updates of my blog or other information that I consider could be useful to others – I can also see the possibility of Twitter as a learning tool.

The Twitter Fail Whale – Twitter blocks due to overload

Twitter doesn’t come risk free – it is open for anybody, free and easy to use. there are great warm, interesting, inspiring, informative and friendly people who I feel a real affinity towards, there are the scammers and spammers, who aren’t worth much – and there are, on odd occasions aggressive people, or at least people who demonstrate forms of aggressive behaviour.

That said it is fairly easy to weed out the negative elements – we ultimately have a choice in who we follow and can block or block and report people who cross the line, meaning they will not appear in our timeline nor be able to follow us again until we lift the block.

I’ve seen a lot of people, recently, complaining about “noise” on Twitter – Foursquare checkins – lots of RTs and #FFs – now you can unfollow me as I’d just like to say, Get real guys, if you don’t like it, don’t whinge and complain – just unfollow – it’s as simple as that.

As in all things in life – you have a choice – exercise your rights of choice, just don’t complain – buy a newspaper or something – there is a lot less noise.

But just bear in mind – there may be a bit, or a lot, of noise – but you never know how much interesting information that you might miss in your newly quiet and tranquil, noise-free timeline!

Twitter can be used for learning, marketing, research, customer relations, PR and much more, but if the unwritten rules are not followed and adhered to, it can seriously backfire and end up being very counter-productive.

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Active Consultants designs and integrates Learning Solutions around Social Media and Blended Learning for corporate clients in France and around the world.