Questions about Twitter

[jamesray50]

I have noticed that some people that tweet will post a link to the article they are referencing and then #xxxx(a category). I finally figured out that was a category after looking a different tweets. I didn't realize Twitter had categories and that you could look things up by categories. Is that what this is? And what is the advantage to adding a category to my tweet?

I also notice another thing when I entered a category in the search. While looking through the tweets on the first page, most of them referenced the same article. But they did not retweet the article. They shorten the article with bitly and tweeted it. However, the article did say it had been retweeted over 100 times. But, the posts I was looking at didn't show they were retweeted posts. Isn't that like stealing an article.

I'm confused. I always retweet if I like an article and think it is relevant.

[vangogh]

The # is called a hashtag. It's not really a category as much as it is a way to tag a tweet to show what it's about. The use is people can search for something using the #hashtag and find lots of tweets on the same subject. By using a #hashtag in your tweets you help someone else find it and generally increase the visibility of your tweet.

I'm not sure I'm following your second question. I'm not understanding where the stealing an article part comes in. Are the tweets still linking to the original post or are they linking to another page that mentions the post?

[Harold Mansfield]

I have noticed that some people that tweet will post a link to the article they are referencing and then #xxxx(a category). I finally figured out that was a category after looking a different tweets. I didn't realize Twitter had categories and that you could look things up by categories. Is that what this is? And what is the advantage to adding a category to my tweet?

I also notice another thing when I entered a category in the search. While looking through the tweets on the first page, most of them referenced the same article. But they did not retweet the article. They shorten the article with bitly and tweeted it. However, the article did say it had been retweeted over 100 times. But, the posts I was looking at didn't show they were retweeted posts. Isn't that like stealing an article.

I'm confused. I always retweet if I like an article and think it is relevant.

As VG said, a hashtag is just a reference to a particular subject matter, It's more like a keyword, than a category and there is no organization or reasoning to them. You can hashtag anything with anything.

As far as the re-tweeting thing. Many people will tweet an article especially if it's from a popular magazine like Mashable. An article there will probably get 1000's single tweets. So if you are following a bunch of "Social Media Experts", a number of them will be tweeting the same articles everyday. It's only a retweet if you tweet it from someone else's tweet.

URL shorteners are popular on Twitter, especially since people use different tools and apps to access an follow Twitter. Each tool or app uses different shorteners.
People also use shorteners to hide affiliate links

[HomeToHeather]

to give you an example of a hashtag and how I use them - tweets that are location specific to my city are tagged with #yyc (the airport code) or #calgary. So if I wanted to search for local tweets I can search on those tags and find what I'm looking for.

As for the RT thing - often when you click a tweet button directly from the article it doesn't include the "RT" even though it sort of is a retweet...make sense?

[jamesray50]

Hi Heather - I love your websites. I think I'm figuring out Twitter. I found out the other day I could enter a keyword in the search bar and tweets would come up with that keyword in it. I hadn't know that before. That will help me retweet on relevant subjects.

[HomeToHeather]

thank you! what's your twitter handle? I'll follow you

[jamesray50]

It's joellenpeters. Thanks!