Introduction

By now, you've heard and seen that all the world's a-twitter. But you're probably still scratching your head and thinking "I don't get it. What's the point? Why are some people so into Twitter?"

Twitter is a tool that you can use to read and publish short, 140-character messages (often called updates). These updates can come from almost anyone, anywhere: your friends, organizations you care about, businesses you frequent, publications you read, or complete strangers you've decided to read.

As a user of Twitter, you get to choose exactly whose updates you want to read - which people you want to follow. In turn, other users can elect to follow your updates. You can post messages publicly for the entire Twitter community, send them privately from one user to another, or, with a private account, post semi-publicly only to users whom you approve. You can view these updates, called Tweets, on any device connected to the Internet.

Twitter has changed and enhanced almost every type of media and community imaginable, from news and sports, to entertainment, to the way that people communicate with friends and companies. Twitter has empowered users to raise money for people in need, coordinate rescue efforts in the wake of a natural disaster, and alert authorities to emergencies and illegal activities both domestic and abroad. Twitter has even powered social and political movements, altering major global events and how (and what) we come to know about them as they unfold.

Skeptical anything could do all that in just 140 characters? Give us a chance to help you understand the power of Twitter. We hope you'll use it to create something #awesome.

With some time invested in Twitter, you may also find yourself communicating more effectively. You can say a lot with a few words. Because it only takes little scraps of time to read and update, we think you'll be surprised how easily you can get value from Twitter.

About This Book

We, the authors (Laura, Anum, and Brittany), aren't employees, representatives, or shareholders in Twitter. The opinions we give in this book represent what's worked for us and our networks, but not necessarily the Twitter world at large. We've been on Twitter for quite a while, and we have a good sense about how people are using it. But Twitter is a living, breathing, and constantly changing dynamic community. Twitter itself may change its feature set, its privacy features, or general direction overnight, which changes the way that people use it.

In fact, since the first and second editions, Twitter has released thousands of changes to make it even easier to engage with the community and get value from using Twitter. Although the layout and the exact location of everything will continue to change around, the basics of Twitter likely will always be the same. After you understand how the service works, you can pretty easily find any feature that may have moved since the publication of this book. Note: When things change, keep in touch with @dummies or our personal accounts (@Pistachio, @anum, and @bleaning).

New for Third Edition

In this edition, we've added whole new chapters, trimmed old ones, created new Parts of Ten, and updated every single page of the book to reflect Twitter's extensive growth and changes in the five years since this book debuted.

As with the second edition, we've once again updated most of our screenshots and how-to's to reflect the latest changes in the Twitter.com interface. (However, remember that as an Internet product, Twitter can - and will - change at any time, so please use our guides as guides, not the be-all and end-all of the Twitter experience.) We also left in a vintage shot or two, for old times' sake.

In addition to feature changes, you'll find new case studies and examples to help you understand how the world has adjusted to Twitter. We reached out to some of the companies, not-for-profits, and individuals we feel are using Twitter in innovative and surprising ways, so look out for them in sidebars as you go through the book.

Lastly, Twitter For Dummies, 3rd Edition, debuts a new author team. Laura sold her startup oneforty to HubSpot, where she met rising social media stars Anum Hussain (say "un-num") and Brittany Leaning. Leslie Poston and Michael Gruen remain dear friends and incredibly important contributors due to their work on the first and second editions.

Motivation

We wrote this book to help more people understand, try out, and benefit from the incredible things Twitter makes possible. When we released the first and second editions, many still considered Twitter a fad. Trust us on this, Twitter has been outright changing lives for more than 8 years already. It's had such an incredible impact on media and journalism that we added an entire chapter just about that. Twitter can be fun, productive, supportive, and surprisingly powerful.

Just ask Laura. Before she "got" Twitter, she was practically homebound with two kids under two, trying to build her personal and professional network from scratch in a new city. Now she's a busy single mom who solo-founded, venture-capital-funded, and sold a company, wrote three editions of the book you're holding, and travels the world keynoting conferences like the Inc 500|5000. Twitter's lightning strike made all the difference. What can it do for you?

Conventions Used in This Book

In this book, we stick to a few conventions to help with readability. Whenever you have to enter text into your phone or computer, we show it in bold, so you can easily see what to write. Monofont text denotes an email address or website URL. We capitalize the names of Twitter pages and features - such as Settings. Numbered lists guide you through tasks that you must complete in order, from top to bottom; you can read bulleted lists in any order you like (from top to bottom, bottom to top, or any other way).

Note: Screenshots in this book show you what the interface was like in summer 2014. Expect that significant changes took and will continue to take place before, during, and surely, after the writing of this book.

What You're Not to Read

We wrote this book for the first-time Twitter users. If you've already created an account that's following some folks and has some followers, you can probably skip the chapters that talk about how to sign up and get moving - although you might find it useful to review the sections on how to dress up your profile. If you're a business and have already gotten rolling on Twitter, you can probably safely ignore many of the starting chapters and check out Parts III and IV. If you're a Twitter pro and could have probably written this book, feel free not to read anything and use this book as a doorstop (please recycle it when you're done!). Okay, we're kidding - it'll make a great gift for the Twitter-skeptics in your life!

Foolish Assumptions

In this book, we make the following assumptions:

• You're at least 13 years of age. (You have to be at least 13 years old to have a Twitter account.)
• You have access to a computer and the Internet (and know how to use them!).
• You have a working email address that you can access.
• You have a mobile phone and know how to send text messages (if you want to access Twitter by using your mobile phone).
• Bonus: You have a smartphone (if you want to use a mobile Twitter application).
• You can read.

How This Book Is Organized

Like other For Dummies books, each chapter in Twitter For Dummies, 3rd Edition, is self-contained, and you can read them in any order you want. However, we've organized the book into five parts; and, if you read them in order, you will gain a strong understanding of the Twitter landscape, from signing up to tweeting like a pro.

Part I: Twitter? Like Birds Do?

Part I introduces you to the very basics of Twitter, from understanding how the Twitter works to getting up and running with an account. You can figure out how to find friends and others already on Twitter, how to invite new friends to try it, and how to start communicating with your people both in public and in private. We also look at the different things that you can do with the Twitter.com interface, including some things that may not be immediately obvious.

Part II: Finding Your Flock

After you become familiar with the basics of Twitter, you probably want to know how to dig in a little deeper to find accounts and people you really want to follow, and to communicate in ways that make you look more comfortable using Twitter. We give you all that information in this part, and we provide a list of many resources that you may find useful in getting Twitter to work best for you.

Part III: Twittering in High Gear

Part III dives way into all the ways that you can interact with the Twitter interface, from desktop clients to mobile phone tricks to short-hand commands that can drastically improve the efficiency and information that you can get from Twitter. We dig a little...