What Is Twitter

Twitter is all the rage these days and it may leave you asking, "What is Twitter?" This microblogging platform is primarily used as a social networking tool and is used by millions of people worldwide for marketing, brief public announcements, messages, daily how-to tips and links to cool websites users may have visited that day. 

A "tweet" is Twitter's term for a message that you send out on Twitter. You are limited to 140 characters when sending out a tweet to the world. People tweet about articles they wrote for a blog, how they're feeling that day, the latest books they've read, links to funny videos and just about anything else that can be expressed in 140 characters. 

Another aspect of Twitter is called "following." If you like someone's tweets, you can become a follower. Then, their tweets will regularly feed into your account where you can view them. Twitter users often swap follows by returning the favor and following their followers. 

The main result of Twitter is a huge collection of mini-conversations on the internet. Millions of tweets happen every day. The search function allows you to narrow it down so that you can find tweets that are compatible with your interests. For example, if you're interested in Zen, you can search for tweets related to the word "Zen." You can then follow the users who tweet about Zen. 

Twitter also suggests people who you may wish to follow. The suggestions are based on whether you tweet about similar things, have similar profiles, follow similar people or get followed by similar people. 

This is just Twitter in a nutshell. Think of it as a basic 101 course. If you really want to find out what Twitter is, you need to get a Twitter account and try it out yourself.