Twitter for Dummies - Laura Fitton [49]
Nudge
Do you have a friend who hasn’t updated in a while? Send her a message asking her to let everyone know what she’s doing:
nudge username
Nudge is a funny little feature, in that it works only for people who receive their tweets as SMS updates, and quite possibly only for people who have specifically signed up for your device updates. Look at the Twitter Profile page for anyone that follows you. Sometimes message and nudge links are both visible; other times, only message. If you can’t see nudge, the person obviously can’t be nudged. But frequently you can see nudge and still nothing at all happens when you click it.
Plenty of active users of Twitter — probably most — have never used nudge. So, don’t sweat it if it doesn’t make sense to you.
Stats
If you ever want to know how many followers you have and how many users you’re following, send the update stats. If you’re online, Twitter displays a message at the top of the screen letting you know. If you sent stats from your cellphone, Twitter sends you a text message with your stats in it. Obviously this makes a lot more sense than viewing stats on the Web page, where they are, of course, already displayed. Stats was a little more meaningful with Track because it also reminded you what words you were tracking.
Get
The Get command allows you to quickly view the last update from a user. Want to see Michael’s latest tweet? Send to Twitter
get gruen
Leslie, Laura, and Michael had a particularly good laugh at this one — nobody really “gets” our dear @gruen, but we do love irony.
Whois
If you want to get someone’s profile information quickly (say, Laura’s), use the Whois command:
whois pistachio
Twitter sends you a message that contains the user’s proper name (Laura Fitton), how long she’s been on Twitter (since April 2007), and her current bio from her Profile page (http://twitter.com/pistachio).
Leave
Leave seems like it would be the opposite of follow, but it’s not. At least, not quite. Leave username simply turns off the individual’s device updates, those text messages that some Twitterers receive on their phones, it does not unfollow that person on Twitter.
On/Off username
Not to be confused with On/Off (see the earlier section), On/Off username turns device updates on and off for individual users. Like follow, On will also connect you to people on Twitter.com so that you’re following their updates. Like leave, the Off username command stops device updates, but it doesn’t unfollow the username account.
In other words, On/Off username has no unique functionality that is different from Follow/Leave.
Invite
Do you want to invite someone to Twitter? Send the Invite command, followed by her e-mail address or mobile phone number:
invite friend@example.com
invite 212 555 1212
Twitter sends either an e-mail or SMS to that person to let her know that you’ve invited her to use Twitter.
Quit and Stop
Quit and Stop discontinue all service between Twitter and your cellphone. They opt your cellphone number out of Twitter altogether. If used, you’ll literally have to log into your Twitter account and redo the steps to add your cellphone to your account.
These commands are probably not the best options to quiet your phone. They’re handy though if you accidentally lock your phone into a separate account by sending join to 40404 after you already have an account.
Codes may come, and codes may go . . .
Because Twitter is a living application, it has commands that come and go. Of note, you may still see some older Twitter users lamenting the loss of the Track feature.
For a recent list of Twitter commands, browse to Twitter’s Help forums by clicking the help link at the top of every Twitter page. At time of print, http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/14020 has the most accurate list of Twitter commands.
The Track series of commands enabled users to receive updates containing a keyword the user was tracking, even if they didn’t follow the person