h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Feel free to stick me on there, menthol_penguin.

I cannot remember, but you know me, Mr 603.

i am who i always am, minichessemouse

mini

I'm 2legs there like here... but I@m known to yous anyhows

I see you found me already, Mr603.

And I found you, Lanza!

I thought I was following some of the people here already. I've added a lot of people to my h2g2 list, I can't follow everyone because I use it for business and its impossible to keep up if I follow thousands of people, but I do have the list in real time on my phone and on the computer.

I'm @BoredomBusters, but I use it for business so lots of dog stuff which I know isn't to everyone's taste and the odd rant about delivery drivers and the agony of them buggering off home early and pretending I wasn't at home.

I have no idea how twitter works, or how to use it. But if I did (or if I do somehow work it out) I'll let you know

Mr603 - I choose not to associate Mrs Zen with my Twitter handle but I don't mind associating h2g2 with it generically. I'll email it to you.

B

Same as my tag, I believe, so you should be able to find it.

Currently I can't use it as it refuses to reset my password, cycling on the 'prove you are human by typing these two words' marlarckey...



MMF

Currently, the top trending topics for h2g2 users on Twitter are as follows:

#h2g2
#confusing
#getwriting
#kcai
#writingtips
@lanzababy_h2g2

So it looks like Lanza is becoming quite popular!

ok, I have no idea how it's supposed to work, how you find things like wot 'e said up there

or anything.
the only way to see twitter is to join it. But once you're there it's like floundering around in the dark.

But - well, I'm there. No idea what to do with it or even how to find or contact anyone

Add me if you want - Vertandor

I can see Twitter without joining it. The trick is to skip the homepage and to start at http://twitter.com/search or on someone's feed. I don't understand it either, though.

TRiG.

New thread on h2g2/twitter crossover type issues: http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/brunel/F19585?thread=8290599&post=110566767#p110566767

@Sho:

A while back Otto Fisch suggested some links for how to use Twitter for work purposes.

I'm geggs0121 over on twitter. Can't say I use it all that much, though.


Geggs

@Sho - you're only following 5 people at the minute, so you're not going to "see" an awful lot of activity.

But you're following the lovely Prof Cox, who is very good at tweeting - he'll include photos of where he's filming, sarky comments about homeopathy, and the odd music reference.

Use the hashtag # to have a look a what people are saying about popular topics.

See who the people you are following are following - I can highly recommend Simon Pegg, Sue Perkins, and Lord Voldemort

Okay then, the penguins basic guide to twitter.

If any of you have a blog it's somewhat similar to that.

Twitter users can post (or tweet) tweets. These tweets can be up to 140 characters and can contain links, words etc etc.

These tweets make up your twitter feed.

Twitter users can re-tweet other users tweets. This means (essentially) that their tweet is displayed in your feed to your followers.

Twitter names start with an @symbol, using @ at the start will show the tweet to that person and people who also follow that person.

So if I follow A and not B, and C writes a tweet like "@B blah blah blah" then I won't see it unless I got to C's profile. If I followed B I would see the tweet anyway.
If the @ symbol is not the first thing in the tweet then anyone can see it.

You can follow people and their tweets will appear in your feed.

Hashtags and trending topics, putting a # in front of a word/string of words (without punctuation) it will allows you to click on that and see what other people have been saying when they included that hash-tag in their tweet. If lots of people use a hash tag it becomes a trending topic. Punctuation stops the hashatag so #onetwothree is a hashtag. Whereas #one,twothree only #one is the hashtag.

The interactiosns bar at the top lets you see who has favourited, retweeted, followed, messaged you.

I've probably missed something but there you go :P

Can anyone give me an example of a specific time when they've found Twitter useful? Or fun, if you like, but mainly useful.

I'm sure it *is* both useful and fun - but I haven't yet seen the point myself. Hence the question.

It's good for links. So I follow people who tweet about bilingualism a lot and they tweet a lot of links to various articles, resources, blogs etc about that.

I find that I am very likely to click on links on Twitter, and find a lot of cool stuff that way.

Likewise, if you have, oooh, a website you want to promote, judicious tweeting of the links, with interesting headlines and hashtags so that people interested in the topic can find you can be quite successful...