You know how children seem to take to things almost instinctively?

I was watching my son use twitter (specifically, Tweetie, a Mac and iPhone application – see Software).

He plays an online game called Roblox and searched for one of the creators. Most people in online games will use the same handle (username) on a number of platforms so he was successful. However, for the purposes of everyday life, Twitter has introduced the facility of searching for a person both by their handle and by real name. Provided the person has entered their real name in the Settings, you can now find them by either twitter handle, e-mail address, or their real name.

After finding the Roblox guy, my son wanted to send him a Direct Message, when I reminded him that sending Direct Messages is only possible to people who follow him. This protects against spam – unwanted messages of mostly commercial nature.

He then sent an @reply, which the receiver will see it in their @ stream. On the twitter website you see the replies sent to you using @ when clicking on the @mentions link in the right column. This allows for discussions about things which might interest other listeners, and for them to repeat (retweet) what you said and interact.

In other applications which use the fact that Twitter is an open API, your @mentions can be seen as a column next to your general stream of tweets and your Direct Messages (as in Tweetdeck – see Software)

Then, my son clicked Follow, which means that he’ll see the updates in his friends stream (on the Twitter website, this is the first thing you see on the Homepage.)

Then, and this is the clever bit, he looked at @Shedletsky’s followers and people he talks to in his stream, because there he will find other Roblox fans. From there he started following others.

As a result of this, and this is today’s lesson for all of us: In his stream he will find messages which are relevant to his interests, and because of @mentions, he will see other people to follow.

The next lesson will follow up on starting to interact.

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