A Twitter Lexicon

Twitter is my favorite microblogging service. There are many, many glossaries of Twitter vocabulary on the web. So many, in fact, it’s almost overwhelming to a newbie to Twitter.

Let’s come up with the top 10 words that someone new to Twitter should know. Here are eight that I came up with quickly. Can you help round out the list?

  1. Tweet: Your 140-character (or shorter) message
  2. Twittering: The act of sending your tweet
  3. Followers: People who receive your tweets
  4. Retweet: Forwarding a tweet to your followers
  5. @ : The symbol that precedes the name of a person you’re replying to
  6. Tweep: Someone you know on Twitter
  7. Tweeple: See “tweep”
  8. Twoops: Accidentally sending a direct (private) message publicly

(And if you’re wondering “what’s Twitter?” see the clear and concise description from Common Craft, the company that specializes in explaining complex things in plain English.)


22 Replies to “A Twitter Lexicon”

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  5. I love to use Twitter whenever i want to know the latest buzz about my friends. I also use Twitter to know the latest buzz from famous persons *

  6. i always update my Twitter and i love to twitter my daily activities to my friends and loved ones. i also maintain a personal blog for entries which requires more detail.

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  8. I’ve gotten asked about emoticons a lot – the smileys that some Twitter folks use to punctuate their Tweets and add a bit more emotional depth to the flat text. Also, Summize is a key Twitter term for searching conversation threads and keywords on http://www.summize.com, especially when Twitter Replies aren’t showing up.

  9. The lingo that I get asked about the very most is actually old computer geek stuff. So these aren’t Twitter specific, but I don’t think I got for more than a couple of days until I see somebody ask me directly (or the Twitter community at large) what they mean.

    w00t: Those aren’t ohs, those are zeros. That is an old gaming term that could have a couple of meanings, but it’s generally accepted as “we own the other team”. It used to be a victory cry after playing games with people online. Now it’s a more generic term often used for something that is really great.

    FTW: “for the win”. There are some other more vulgar representations, but this is what most people refer to it as. A nice nod to game shows, and another exclamation of joy or victory.

    noob: Same as newbie. You used that to start your post. 🙂

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