@uos23 Can anyone see this on the list?I sent Pam a reply - but I want to expand on that here, as I think it needs more detail than you can fit into (several!) 140 character messages.
— Pam Wake (@choccypam) February 11, 2013
Essentially tweets are very public messages. It might feel like you're having a private discussion with friends, but a more accurate picture would be of you writing a message to your friend on a post-it note, and sticking it on a park wall. Your friend can read it, but so can anyone else who happens to wander past the wall today, or at any time in the future.
It's this very public accessibility of tweets that makes the service so powerful... but which can also land people in hot water about what they write.
The Basics
When you write a tweet, it automatically appears on the timeline of anyone who follows you - unless you start it with someone else's username.
So everyone who follows you will automatically see that message.
But your message can also be found by anyone who runs a search on any word or hash tag that you've included in your message. So potentially it's viewable by anyone on Twitter.
Scary? Perhaps. But remember that Twitter is a deliberately public medium. If you want to have private conversations, Twitter is not the place. The whole point of Twitter is to have your voice heard - which is why people put hash tags on - it's done to make their tweet more likely to be found and read by complete strangers.
Browsing Messages
People can also see what you've tweeted if they find your profile. They can look at your Twitter home page and click on the list of your tweets.
This is a really useful feature if you've just got a new follower... see what they've tweeted and find out if they're actually a spam account, just a random person, or somebody you know in real life.
Tweeting Others Directly
If you send a message directly to someone else, you normally start that tweet with their username, e.g.:
@ricpaul Great #saintsfc result on Saturday!Here, only people who follow both you and @ricpaul will have that message automatically added to their Twitter timeline. (But remember it's still perfectly findable through the other means mentioned above.)
But what if you want everyone to see your message to someone else?
In that case, start your message with a full stop:.@ricpaul Great #saintsfc result on Saturday!Because the message doesn't now start with a username, everyone who follows you will now see your tweet in their timeline, whether or not they follow @ricpaul
(In fact it could be any character, but the full stop is used by convention because it's unobtrusive.)
Direct Messages
If you do want to send a private message to someone, then you can "direct message" them. But you can only do this if you follow that person, and they follow you as well.Protecting Your Account
If you are feeling nervous about going public on Twitter, then you can protect your tweets. This means that your messages will only be viewable by your followers.
But it also means that you will need to approve every request to follow you, and nobody can retweet any of your messages.
I can see why people might want to do that... but it kind of defeats the whole point of being on Twitter in the first place, in my opinion.
Don't Be Scared!
I hope this has clarified a few things - my main message about experimenting with Twitter is not to be scared. Get out there and tweet! The fun of Twitter only really appears when you've built up a few followers and had a few discussions - so try following a few people who talk about subjects you're interested in.
Search on a few hash tags that relate to subjects you're interested in, and reply to a few people and retweet a few messages that you like.
It will probably take more than a week to really get into Twitter properly if you've not been using it before now - but give it a go... you might just find that you like it :)
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