Tweet is a message or status message that has been sent by the social network Twitter. A tweet is limited to 140 characters with spaces filled. Through the limitation, tweets are reminiscent of telegram-like short messages (see telegram style). The social network Twitter can thus be referred to as a microblogging service because it provides its users with only this limited number of characters. If a logged-in user sends a tweet, it is visible in his profile and is also displayed to the users who are connected to him – so-called followers – on an overview page. This bundles all messages from friends accounts. Users can access and display a tweet on their own profile, which is called retweet. When writing a tweet, so-called hashtags can be used to categorize the message. As a hashtag, a word chain is designated, preceded by a diamond sign (#) (eg #wordgroup).term
The term is derived from the English verb to tweet, which can be translated with chirping. The term thus refers metaphorically to what is at issue here. For the chirping of birds is generally defined as a fast, rapidly successive sequence of sounds, which characterizes the core of such a tweets quite intelligently. With ebendieser metaphorik ultimately plays the company name itself, because Twitter is simply the English nouns for gezwitscher.
The activity of placing such tweets on Twitter is called tweet. This verb is derived from the name of the company. Users have the opportunity to subscribe to the short messages from others and to display them on their own page called Timeline. In addition, the user can decide whether he can make his tweets visible to all users of the network, or only show them to a selected private circle. This is done with a tweet on Twitter
The above picture illustrates the basic process. The logged-in user – in the example, he is named Jonathan – sets a tweet from his account. So he is twittering. Shortly thereafter, this message appears in his own profile, which is also visible to outsiders when it has not been placed on private, and in the timeline of the persons who have networked with him. These are called followers.
If Jonathan had used a hashtag in his message, that is, a word preceded by a diamond sign, his message would also appear in an overview that bundles all the tweets that use this hashtag. For example, Jonathan would have been able to use the Hashtag #hallo, which would make his message appear on the overview page, which displays all messages with the hash tag #hallo. The following example illustrates this process:
Tweet and Retweet
Once a message has landed in the Twitter universe, other users can interact with it. One possibility is the so-called retweeten, which ultimately means to publish the tweet of another user on their own profile and thus make it accessible to their own followers.
This means that the message of another user has been judged as readable and is subsequently accepted by another user. For this, the social network offers a button under each tweet, which makes it possible to transfer the original message to its own profile and thus tweet to its own followers. The recycled message is then marked with the indication that it was only picked up. In practice this looks as follows (see: Tweet from the example): A Tweet was geretweeted on Twitter
Types of tweets
The social network also provides users with additional ways to interact with the individual tweets. Basically, tweets can be picked up (retweet), favored, answered and pinned. These four possibilities are briefly described below.
As described above, a message can be propagated via Retweet in its own profile, each user can respond to a tweet, the written comment is then displayed under the original tweet and is also displayed as a tweet in his own profile. In addition, tweets can be favored, which is certainly a public statement that a user likes the message. It is also possible to tweets tweets that were published on your own profile. This is then prominently displayed above all other own tweets, that is, tacked with certainty.
Short overview: The most important part of the term at a glance
Tweet is a message sent by the social network Twitter. Such a message is limited to 140 characters, with spaces being entered. For this reason, the social network is called microblogging service.
Ultimately, such tweets form the backbone of Twitter. Users share short messages with their profile, and others can subscribe to them to display them in their own timeline. Furthermore, there are different possibilities of interaction.
This way, the messages of other users can be annotated, favored and transferred via Retweet into their own profile. In addition, it is possible to create your own tweet above your own message stream, which is then placed above all the following and previous ones.