HONG KONG, LET'S TWEET!

HONG KONG, LET'S GO TWEETING TOGETHER!

All you need to know are some facts and basics and then you're off to go!

Fast facts

1. Twitter is a real-time social network on which users can tweet(v. write, specific Twitter term) 140 characters at most for each tweet (n. Twitter post).

2. At the heart of Twitter are small bursts of information called Tweets.

3. Twitter currently does NOT provide Chinese-Big5 as a choice of language preference.

4. Twitter was launched in July 15, 2006.

5. As of March 2011, there are 200 million users registered on Twitter.

6. As the early launch of Twitter, there was not a specific way to reply to others' tweets. The popular use of "@username" at the beginning of a reply was made official later.

7. In a tweet, you can often see a # symbol put before words, e.g. #ilovebritneyspears. According to Twitter:

The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages.

Is Twitter NOT popular among Hong Kong users? SO TRUE. Even my friends often say Facebook already provides a similar feature -- status. Then, why do they need a new one to write something on the Internet while they already have got one? And they often don't like the idea of having to write with a restriction of 140-character in length each time.

You can FOLLOW others 
You can follow celebrities, companies, friends, whoever you want to follow. But sometimes you may not be following the real person/company. Then you'll have to look for the VERIFIED LOGO, which is usually placed next to a username.

Verified Logo

But remember, NOT all users can have this logo. Usually well-known people and companies have this verified logo to make them stand out from the sea of users of the same name. (UPDATE: Currently Twitter's verification program is closed. No public application allowed. But they are still verifying some trusting sources.)

Great for mobile users

If you have a mobile phone that can also access the Internet, you would definitely find that browsing Twitter on a mobile phone is actually better than browsing Facebook. If you browse Facebook on your mobile phone, there are always too much information that a lot of scrolling jobs need to be done. With Twitter, there are only words and seldom pictures. There are only a few sentences, it's easier to read them all and get back to work. I think it's a good way to take your mind off a bit from whatever you're doing to read some jokes on Twitter.

PEOPLE you should follow:

1. Seth Meyers (@sethmeyers21) -- If you know/watch Saturday Night Live, you're familiar with this person. He's just so hilarious in many ways. Just follow him and constantly read his tweets and big laughs will follow naturally.

2. Lord Voldermort (@Lord_Voldemort7) -- THE DARK LORD/YOU-KNOW-WHO from the Harry Potter series, now comes to live and continues to influence all of us. He literally follows no one, but he has drawn more than a million of followers (Perhaps they're either deatheaters or they want to be one?). The Dark Lord always throws some jokes out and no SPELLS can stop us from laughing.

3. Homer J. Simpson (@HomerJSimpson) -- The jokes from THE SIMPSONS extends to the Internet and the jokes are just as great. But I'd love to see other characters such as Bart and Lisa go on Twitter (maybe they're just too young Homer and Marge don't allow them to use Twitter?).

4. Britney Spears (@britneyspears) -- I just can't stop loving her and her music. And she FOLLOWS me back. I was excited, and I even am so at this moment writing the sentence.

5. Me (@kaspar_lam) -- I don't usually tweet but I'd love to see more people tweeting. I'd definitely read their tweets and I'd always learn something off them. So, if you're new on Twitter, why don't you let me know? LOL

P.S. One regret though, was that I couldn't use the username kasparlam because it was already registered by another person. I should have registered sooner.#justsaying

Reference:

Twitter