Twitter Tips, Tricks, and Tweets [Paperback]

My teenage daughters talked me into signing up for Twitter. I had no idea what I was getting into. But I had found a few old school friends and work colleagues on Facebook, so I thought: Why not?

When I started getting emails from perfect strangers saying they were "following" me on Twitter, I thought perhaps I should find out what this phenomenon was really all about. So I ordered this book.

The book is well-written, and keeps within the parameters of knowledge which would belong to the average computer-savvy person (i.e. someone who can use a computer to surf for pleasure, word process, send email and do their office job.) It explained the reasoning behind Twitter, which is to keep up with friends and their lives in short bursts (bytes, really) of frequent information. The book also explains how to use shortcuts and extra features to enhance one's Twitter experience.

What the book did for me, admirably, is convince me that Twitter is a complete waste of time. I am already inundated with information which I feel I must assimilate to stay current in this fast-paced world. Twitter is an electronic pastime which I can safely do without. This book helped me decide that, and I think it did a good job of it.

You might come to the opposite conclusion after reading this book. It's an excellent resource, no matter what you decide.

Highly recommended.

Twitter as a social networking tool is exploding and this book is the first to help you untangle all of information you need to learn about Twitter and put out your first "tweet." It provides a good foundation for the basics of getting started but it is also loaded with intermediate and advanced tips and tricks to get the most out of Twitter. Whether you just want to start tweeting or are looking for ways to leverage Twitter to its fullest, I think you'll find everything you need to learn and maximize Twitter in this book.

Full disclosure: By the time I read this book, I had been active on twitter for over a year. I had several hundred followers and was following several hundred people. In addition, I was a technical editor for a book on Programming the Twitter API

With that said, I considered the value of this book from both a power user's perspective as well as a complete n00b.

Twitter is extremely popular and there are tons of people on it. There are several items that you probably won't understand at first and it can be daunting. There are several gotchas you'll want to avoid. There are many things you can do to make Tweeting easier and the same goes for reading tweets. If you are new to twitter or are considering joining it, I can't think of a better resource.

-The book is very easy to read. The author's style is one that makes for very pleasant reading. He's concise and to the point yet covers topics very thoroughly. He uses anecdotes and works hard to keep the material light and interesting, but it's also very technical. You could easily read this book in a night or two which, for new users would probably be a good idea. I'd recommend reading the first few chapters, then going to twitter and playing around with what you know. Then read the next few and repeat until the end. The only reason I say this is b/c in many ways, the book is like a waterfall. There's just a ton of material and suggestions in it and the overwhelming majority are things that you'll definitely want to use or consider. It's not hard to build a catalog of every feature. What he does instead is cover just about every imagineable aspect of twitter while explaining why you'd want to do something a certain way or use a certain feature. He explains the basics and then proceeds to areas more suited to power users. By taking a few breaks and trying everything out, everything will sink in and you'll likely get more out of it. The thing is, there's so many cool tips that you'll invariably forget a few b/c each time you read of a new one, it gets you thinking about what you can do with it.

He'll get you started setting up the account. From there he'll walk you through finding people to follow (either people you already know, or people you'd likely find interesting). He explains how to search for items and how to get started the right way. He also warns you about what type of people to avoid and what to do if you find you've been had by a Spam bot or troll.

From there he walks you through commonly used features in twitter and explains items like #hashtags. I know many people who've used twitter for a while and seen #hashtags but didn't know what they were. He covers #hashtags and @responses. He explains trending topics as well.

In addition he explains various twitter clients and why you might want to use them as opposed to the web interface. And of course he explains using twitter from your phone exclusively. By now, I'm sure there are a bunch of new iPhone and Android apps but he did have many good suggestions.

He lists some interesting people you might want to follow and provides many references and links to twitter information.

If you're a seasoned Twitter user, you'll still find this book useful. It's a great master reference for one thing. For another, he clearly is a power user and explains how to use twitter as a power user. I already mentioned the twitter tools and an explanation as to why you'd use the web interface, phone interface or a twitter client. In that discussion you get the pros and cons of each. He also discusses keeping yourself safe on twitter and how to spot potential problem followers. If you've used Twitter for any period of time, you probably already have your own methods of doing this - I know I did - but I incorporated his thoughts as well. The other thing a power user will benefit from is his explanation of the features and why they matter. The area that sticks out most for me was searching and hashtags. I knew how to search but never used it prior to reading this book. He explained how I could go about finding other Twitterers that I might find interesting and how to find information on topics I found interesting. I also seldomly used #hashtags before reading this. I used them occassionally but very rare overall. Then I understood why they matter (to be honest, when I first saw them, I thought they were some unofficial convention people just decided to use - it wasn't until i started seeing the trending links that I realized they were an officially supported feature. He also goes into depth about @responses - these are fairly self-explanatory but it is helfpul to understand the why and how (at first, I never used the @ sign when responding to people).

There is coverage of twitter etiquette (which isn't objective by any means - nonetheless, his suggestions are all items I incorporated if I wasn't doing them already).

Finally, he provides a lot of "for futher information" coverage. He gives out links, twitter ids and the like of places to find good information and people that you might want to follow. I ended up following several of them and definitely ended up using many of his suggestions.

I think this book will be valueable to anyone interested in Twitter. It'll help you avoid common pitfalls and can literally make you a power user in just a few hours. You'll also understand how to use Twitter to your advantage very quickly which will likely perk your interst in it. If you're already a Twitter Power user - there's still good information and reminders and I don't think you'd find the book boring (although the account creation and adding people material is probably stuff you could skip over). It's well written (very well written IMHO), easy to read and fun. And it's easy to follow along - the book's organization is superb. If you took the same info and structured it differently, it wouldn't be hard to come up with something that was hard to follow. It looks like he put a good bit of thought into grouping of information b/c *everything is where you'd expect to find it*. I didn't find any typos that I can remember or grammar errors. All the links worked and everything referenced was available just as advertised. He's obviously a seasoned author who knows how to write a very readable book. His attention to detail is reflected in virtually every aspect of the book and it's definitely something any Twitter user will get something out of.

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