Twitter is a social network that allows its users to publish short posts (called “tweets”). This kind of sharing messages is also known as microblogging. You can use Twitter as an app on your mobile device, via the website, or by SMS.
This social networking service was founded in California in 2006 and is still provided by the American company Twitter, Inc. The service has gained worldwide popularity and currently has around 200 million users. This social network is most popular in the USA, Japan, India, and United Kingdom.
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Post Restrictions
On Twitter, you can publish one post with a maximum length of 280 characters (originally only 140 characters were allowed). Each post contains usually only text (with mentions, hashtags, or links to other pages/articles). When you want to post audio or video tweets, this kind of content is limited to 140 seconds.
Users unregistered on Twitter can only read posts that are publicly available. When you want to post something, like or retweet other users’ posts, you need to register on this platform.
Twitter Features
- Follow – when a user subscribes to other users’ tweets (she becomes a follower of this user)
- Like – user can like posts (like was formerly known as “favorite”), the counters for likes appear next to the buttons in timelines
- Retweet – user can forward each tweet written by other users to their own feed, retweet contains author’s name and the header of the person who re-tweets
- Quote tweet – when retweeting, users can also add their comment to this post
All tweets are publicly visible, but you can restrict sending tweets only to your followers or block certain accounts from viewing your posts. There’s also a possibility to mute users you don’t want to interact with.
# Hashtag
Using hashtags, you describe a given tweet. With a hashtag, you can express your feelings or emotions (joy, excitement, anger, sadness) or your points of interest (movies, events, protests, personalities, or brands).
The hashtag begins with a # character and Twitter subsequently turns it into a link. This link helps users find the content of similar topics – when clicking on that link you find other tweets with the same hashtag.
@ Mention (At sign)
@ character is used to tag other users on Twitter. The mention begins with @ character followed by a username. This way the user is mentioned in a post and this post will appear in her Mentions section. For mentions, users don’t need to follow each other.
You can also use the At sign when replying to other users.
Why use Twitter?
We live in the age of social media… Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media are everywhere.
But what makes Twitter exceptional?
Twitter differs from other social media with its emphasis on information and events that are happening right now.
This platform allows you to share your opinions, experiences, articles, or videos you found interesting. Here you can share these thoughts with the whole world. You can also attach poll questions to your tweets, links to websites, or use its streaming video services.
Twitter is a great form of promotion too. It serves companies, businesses, and also celebrities for promoting their products, services, and the like. Hashtag-based discussions are great features for this.
Twitter is often used as a support for customers in the form of a customer service channel. Advertisers claim that more than 80 % of social customer service requests belong to Twitter.
Twitter is also a great tool for your business. It can be easily integrated with CDP. if you want to learn more, read our short article about CDP integration with Twitter Ads.