Twitter™ for Dummies®

Chapter 3. Stroll Around the Grounds: A Tour of the Twitter Interface

In This Chapter

• Reading the feed on your Twitter Home screen

• Making a Twitter conversation personal by using @replies and direct messages

• Marking your Twitter favorites

• Viewing who you're following and who's following you

• Reviewing your past Twitter updates

For the power it wields, Twitter is one of the simplest and, we think, most elegant Web sites for mass communication. The interface makes interacting with other people — some you already know and others you'll meet — incredibly easy, and it cleanly organizes a lot of information.

As you use Twitter more and more, you may want to know where to locate things quickly and manage your communication flow more intelligently. In this chapter, we dive down into each Twitter page view, showing how it relates to the conversations going on around you and the conversations you're having directly.

Starting Out on the Home Screen

When you first log into Twitter, the Home screen is your first stop. After you set up your account, you go to this screen to touch base with your followers and the people you're following. On the Home screen, you can also see who's talking to you directly through @replies, which are public tweets in response to individual users, and direct messages (DMs), which are private, one-to-one tweets. (For more on using @replies and DMs, see the sections "Tweeting to One Specific Person: @Replies" and "Shhh! Sending Private Notes via Direct Messages," later in this ...