Twitter for Dummies - Laura Fitton [93]
So, what does all this connectedness have to do with you? If you listen to longtime Twitter users talk about it, you may start to feel like there are a whole lot of shared memories and assumptions that you’re not a part of. Don’t worry: New people are joining Twitter all the time. From the period of November 2008 until the final touches were put on this book, Twitter doubled at least three times. That means pretty much everyone is new, and you shouldn’t feel shy about what came before. We’re just filling you in on it so that you have some idea how these past feel-good moments apply to you.
For one thing, Twitter’s past has established the underlying tone, lexicon, and conventions on Twitter. Also, the camaraderie among Twitter users is based on trust, and if you want people to trust you on Twitter (just like if you want people to trust you in any other circumstance), you really ought to give as much (or more) than you get back. To be effective, you really need to add value to the Twitter streams of others and act in a way that inspires trust. You will be rewarded with interesting new connections, ideas, and even lifelong (virtual and real life) friends.
Figure 12-1: The Fail Whale appears when Twitter’s traffic exceeds their server capacity.
Making New Friends
In life, the word friend can have a number of different meanings. But on Twitter (and on most of the Internet), a friend is someone with whom you share a connection. Many Twitter users naturally follow people they know and trust; over time, however, many people start interacting with strangers. It’s therefore not unusual to hear about the friends and real-life connections that people make on Twitter.
At first, you might have trouble believing it. Most people start out feeling like the stranger at a cocktail party, and existing Twitter users might not start a meaningful interaction with you right away. But most people will say hello and expect you to respond to them and tell them a bit about you — just as they would in a real conversation. Well, it is a real conversation.
Making friends on Twitter is much like making friends in the real world: If two people have things in common (for example, coming from the same home town), share a common interest (such as politics), or simply find each other fascinating, they may become friends. In fact, Twitter’s interface makes it pretty easy to figure out if someone is worth following — just look at the person’s Twitter Profile page, read her bio, check out her timeline, and follow her if she seems interesting.
Twitter users tend to share something unique or telling about themselves in their Twitter Profile page, either inside their biographies or URLs — or both. So, if you receive a flurry of tweets welcoming you to the service, take a look through those people’s Profile pages and URLs to get a better feel for who they are, and whether you’d want to strike up a conversation with them . . . and then do so, if you want!
If you express interest in other people and what they say or do, they tend to reciprocate. In general, people love to know that you’re interested in what they have to say, in real life and on Twitter.
You can find people with whom you want to start conversations through the public timeline, but if you want to look for individuals who share your interests, you can quickly and easily find those people by using Twitter Search (see Chapter 9) to see who’s already talking about your interests. Laura frequently challenges new users to search for the most obscure keywords around their work or their favorite hobbies, to find people they have something special in common with.
You may find sending that first tweet to a potential Twitter connection a bit daunting. After all, what do you say to a total stranger? How do you say it? As a general rule, think of Twitter as a giant