To be totally unable to understand how Twitter works

[Catnao]

even though lots of old people, including my father, apparently are?

softkitty what I meant is that QT say on the programme what hashtag to use for following QT tweets.

There are quite a few of us in my local business community who have agreed on a certain hashtag and we use it in all our tweets, suggest each other for work that comes up so it really does work for networking. But we are a small market town so relatively easy to build a community. In fact, there are 80 of us meeting up on Monday night, a tweetup arranged through our interaction on Twitter.

I'm still at a complete loss having read all this! If I wanted to ask a question who would see it if I don't have any followers?

I have tried a test and asked a question.

Right. I'm on. I've jumped in @JazzyMcJeff.... Now for the love of God someone help me!

You need to follow other people. If they see you following them, they might follow you back if you don't look like a bot.

Ok, I've added Cuba_Cat, mmelindt, therealBIWI and cheshirecat. I've messages them. I think. Or... Now I don't know. This is hard!

I think it depends on whether you are using it for a particular purpose. I am a freelance journo and it has really helped me to build a twitter profile and connect with people who also specialise in and around my subject area. It looks good to have a lot of twitter followers too - even if not all of us quite know how we can use them yet!

Everyone I follow seems to tread the appropriate line between sharing and openly trying to promote or flog you stuff. You have to really connect with other people to use it properly and by retweeting anything I have found interesting I have picked up more followers and had other people in turn retweet my posts. I find it helps to be generous with your tweeting and help other people when you can.

Also as someone who works at home on her own it's been great to find myself a little community - rather like I imagine some people enjoy MN (which I am beginning to too). It's also good for generating hits to websites or blogs if that is in your line of work (or indeed hobbies) too.

When I first started off with it I wasn't very active and I would just follow things like Sky and BBC News and it was nice to have a rolling feed of headlines on my mobile every time I had a sec to get on to twitter.

It has also been surprisingly useful in helping sorting out really niggly problems - I recently tweeted venomously about BT messing up my life and was contacted by them immediately, from someone in the UK, who dealt with my problem and had a refund cheque in the post in the hour. Something I had spent weeks previously trying to arrange unsuccessfully via call centres and lengthy phone queues. I travel for a living and it was also great for keeping up to date with the airports when there were problems with the snow.

When once you get into it and develop your own community it can be a lot of fun, but I can easily see how someone who isn't self-employed, isn't promoting anything, sees all the friends they want to on a regular basis and has enough virtual social contact through facebook already wouldn't need to bother with it.

Phew. Was that too much...?

id follow if you let me know your twitter name freelance

Exoticfruits
If you ask a question, you will only get an answer if you have a word in it that someone may be searching for.

eg. Is anyone here on Mumsnet - anyone with a search box "mumsnet" will see that and can answer.

If you ask, "Are we there yet?" then you are unlikely to get an answer.

Unless one the people who follow you answer you.

Oh, and the last "help, how do I use Twitter" thread, some clever person suggested putting your twitter name on your MN profile, in the status box. So when others hover hover your name, they see your twitter name.

freelancegirl : "was that too much"?"

No, far from it, that, and other posters (eg llareggub, MmeLindt, to nme but 2) have given me a better insight into how Twitter has been useful to you.

I think my projects, and perhaps personality (generally a quiet, calm, listener, with perhaps some shyness unless there's problem, cause, or campaign which annoys or exercises me to switch to all guns blazing and giving it 100% of my time) mean I am unlikely to want to 'network' in the same sort of way as many, and tend to avoid such groups rather than participate.

I don't see me changing any time soon.

It is big fat tighty wighty pants!!

I think this because I is thick and don't get it!

I'm on! And I've got... 8 followers! Real ones!

If you too, want to follow the fast and crazy world of jazziejeff, find me on twitter @JazzyMcJeff I'm lush.

MmeLindt How do you put that into your status box? In fact, what is a status box?!

Ooh, it's ok, I found it! God, I'm learning loads today!

Waves to softwarmkitty look, look we're friends on twitter!

YANBU - I use Twitter way too much quite a lot and yet reading this thread I realise I'm only scratching the service. I don't tweet much - but I follow about 60.

I'm interested in education and politics and tend to follow journalists and bloggers who tweet on these. If you have a question about something you've read a quick tweet to the author and you normally get an answer.

I don't tend to follow celebs - although I did follow Lord Sugar for a while. But his cool tweets from the House of Lords (really) weren't worth the stream of tweets about football, his house in the US etc.

It took me ages to really enjoy and make the most of Twitter, but now I find it a great tool. I use it for posting bits and bobs about my business (self employed, sell vintage stuff and handmade organic fabric things), as well as some personal things (e.g. - 'am having the day from hell. Someone tell me whether to persevere with nursery for my son').

Mainly people follow you if you follow them, although after a while you find you just accumulate followers because either they're searching topics you're tweeting on or people who follow you are are writing @you messages and their followers are clicking through to see who @you is.

I do a lot of hand making (quilts, clothes, sewing and knitting generally) and blog quite a lot, and I've found it a great way to meet other people who are into the same things (not many in the UK, more in the States) and to get advice when I'm stuck on something. I have something like 430 followers now, and it's enough to get an answer most of the time when I need help! I'm here

Oh, and DP uses it to follow about 3 million journalists and news channels. He is a bit news obsessed. He almost never tweets, but he loves it as a news resource. So even if you don't really do sharing, it can be useful in that way. Although more so if you're an iPhone/Android phone sort of person (or in front of your computer ALL DAY).

Jack
God, Alan Sugar was boring as hell. Constantly RTing compliments from those who had found his book, "fascinating and inspiring".

3 hours later and no one has replied to my question.

Sorry-my question that I put on Twitter.

MMmeLindt he's actually the only person I've unfollowed.

what's your Twitter name, exoticfruits?

I love twitter but I struggle with it as there are days when I just don't get on and I worry that people will think I'm ignoring them!

llareggub, BIWI and MmeLindt are right - the more you use it and interact, the better it becomes.

MmeLindt - great suggestion to use MN status to share twitter name, although if anyone is interested, mine is originally @essenceofSES