Perfect Porridge: Second Helpings

At first, the Twitter syntax can seem confusing. Here’s a sample post from Blogworld:

perfectporridge: @mattdickman What are long-term implications of micromedia on events? There is digital backchannel wherever you go now. Just like here #bwe08 

In this example, perfectporridge is the Twitter user name of the author. @mattdickman refers to another Twitter user (or Twitterer).

Using the @ symbol with the user name (called an @reply) accomplishes two things: it makes this post visible on mattdickman’s Twitter profile, and, specifically, by placing the @reply at the beginning of the line, the post will appear in a special “reply” portion of mattdickman’s profile that collects all responses to his posts.

The example ends with a “hashtag,” #bwe08, short for Blogworld Expo 2008, which attendees of Blogworld collectively and voluntarily agreed to include as a way to make sure their tweets about Blogworld would be easily searchable or picked up by feeds looking for the #bwe08 keyword. If Twitterers didn’t include #bwe08, and if their posts didn’t happen to include the word Blogworld, their comments would be hard to find when searching for Blogworld-related content.