Scott Porad

I have my Twitter and Facebook accounts linked through the Twitter Facebook App. In other words, any non-reply tweets are posted to Facebook as a status update.

Last night, I tweeted this:

RT: @howardlindzon message to you cheapskates – twiiter will launch paid pro accounts. start bitching http://bit.ly/qOtg6 i plan on …

which was not a reply, so it updated my Facebook status. And this morning I received this message from a Facebook Friend:

“Dude…what language are you speaking?”

My reply was, “I am speaking Twitter”.

It then occurred to me that perhaps a I needed to create a Twitter Glossary. Here goes…if you have anything to add or correct, please send me an e-mail or leave a comment:

@ = the prefix before a username, e.g. @scottporad; used when you want to direct a tweet at a specific person or when you reference a specific person in a tweet; for example, “had lunch with @benhuh today” says “I had lunch with Ben Huh today”; tweets that begin with @username are treated as Replies within Twitter, for example “@benhuh, i disagree with your last tweet” appears under the Replies page in Twitter

# = the prefix before a topic identifier (a.k.a. “hashtag”); used when you want to associate a tweet with a specific topic; for example “had drinks with @benhuh at #sxsw” or “discussed #lolcats with @scottporad”

$ = stock ticker symbol; for example $goog is represents Google’s stock ticker symbol

RT = “retweet” as in “I am retweeting someone else’s tweet”. Similar to forwarding an e-mail

via = similar to RT, shares information that someone else originally tweeted, but perhaps the tweet is not being “retweeted” entirely.  Also, in some tools filter out “RT”, so some people use this instead.

OH = “overheard” as in “I am tweeting something I overheard someone else say”