Monday, December 05, 2011

Twitter Jargon You Need To Know

Posted by Amanda Walsh

The other day we received a client question about how to retweet with a comment using the third-party application, Hootsuite. After helping the client with the inquiry, I began thinking about some abbreviations on Twitter that I only recently learned about and wanted to share some resources with The PR Lawyer readership.

Some of the most useful abbreviations on Twitter include:

• MT: Modified tweet. This means the tweet is a paraphrase of a tweet originally written by someone else.

• RT: Retweet. The tweet was forwarded by another user.

• DM: Direct message. A direct-message is a message only you and the person who sent it can read. Important to note: To DM someone all you need to type is D username message.

• PRT: Partial retweet. The tweet you're looking at is the truncated version of someone else's tweet.

• HT:  Hat tip. This is a way of sharing a link, but also thanking the Twitter user who originally shared it. You can also use “via” and include the other person’s Twitter handle.

• CC: Carbon-copy. Works the same way as email.

• IMHO: In my humble opinion.

• OH: Overheard.

• IRL: In real life

• FWIW: For what it's worth.

• QOTD: Quote of the day

• BTW: By the way

• AFAIK: As far as I know

• TY: Thank you

• YW: You're welcome

Read more on Business Insider here: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-08-02/tech/30060587_1_tweet-abbreviations-twitter-user#ixzz1ffeSQHCM

Some other helpful resources for those who use Hootsuite or prefer Twitter.com:

http://help.hootsuite.com/entries/123905-how-to-send-a-reply-retweet-or-direct-mention

http://mashable.com/2009/04/16/retweet-guide/

photo credit: twitter.com

2 comments:

Kara said...

Thank you! I just recently got on Twitter and it seems like a foreign language to me at times!

Olliers Solicitors said...

Excellent breakdown of the most common jargon terms for Twitter, ideal for beginners as Twitter can seem very daunting at first!