At H&H Web, we’re always geeking out on new developments in the social media world. Facebook launched a location feature?! Twitter now hosts promoted tweets?! We try to share in our excitement, but all too often we get the same reaction from our family and friends: eyes completely glaze over and they check out of our conversation. We’re determined to fix this. We have lots of exciting ideas for Livingston revolving around the use of Twitter, so we want to get you prepared – starting with this simple introduction of Twitter.

So, what exactly is Twitter? The most simple definition we’ve come across is this: Twitter is a microblogging software that allows its users to send messages in 140 characters or less to the user’s subscribers, or followers. To “tweet” is to send a message using Twitter. A “retweet” is a reply to a tweet that includes the original message. And a “hashtag” is a word or acronym used to describe a tweet in order for people to easily follow conversations surrounding the hashtag subject.

For example, H&H Web might tweet about a variety of subjects: sometimes we share goofy status updates, like our most recent tweet about our random tendency to wear matching shades of purple to business meetings. Other times we’ll share an interesting article, a useful tip, or a photo. If we run across a tweet sent out by one of the users we are following and we want to share it with our followers as well, we’ll retweet it. That shows up something like this:

And if we’re tweeting about something that people are talking about on Twitter, we might add a hashtag. So if we’re going to an event in Bozeman, we might post a tweet about it and add #Bozeman and #MT in order to make the tweet more easily seen by people who are searching Bozeman, MT.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? We want the word “tweet” to start evoking nods of comprehension instead of wild-eyed looks of bewilderment, and hope that this helps.