Twitter 101

About your Twitter timeline

Stream. Feed. Timeline. It goes by many names. It's the place where you receive updates, in the form of tweets, from the people, companies, and organizations you follow. The more people you follow, the more tweets you see in your timeline. The most recent tweets appear at the top.

The Twitter timeline

This is where the Twitter experience really begins. Your timeline is constantly updating (maybe even right now!) to reflect what's going on in your world. If your life revolves around news and politics, you'll be able to follow updates from all the trusted sources—even grassroots, eyewitness accounts—as the news takes place. If you love technology, there's no shortage of developments to be shared and talked about with your peers.

Depending on your point of view, this either sounds exhilarating or intimidating. It can be difficult to keep up, but you should never feel pressured. Just enjoy Twitter when you can, whether you have the time to check it every day or only once a week. For those of you who'd like to take it a step further, there are several tools and features (provided by Twitter and even other sites) that are designed to help you manage your account and stay informed.

Have you noticed the icon below some tweets? That's the promoted tweet badge, which indicates that a company has paid for a tweet to appear in your timeline. Twitter will try to show only promoted tweets that appeal to you, but sometimes you may prefer to ignore them altogether.

A promoted tweet

Ways to manage your timeline

These tools are optional, but they have the potential to improve your Twitter experience regardless of how many people you follow. Experiment to see which ones you like.

• Lists: Creating Lists gives you the ability to group the people you follow (thereby grouping their updates) however you see fit. In this example, @AliaJones has created lists for some of her interests, including Local Activities and Friends & Family. Each list is like a miniature timeline of the people she chooses to include. Click the Lists button in the left navigation pane on your Profile page to see your lists.
  
  The Twitter Lists feature
• Favorites: Favoriting memorable or important tweets is a great way to save them—either for posterity or so you can come back to them later. You can favorite a tweet while you're at the doctor's office, for example, and watch the video when you get home. Just hover over the tweet and click Favorite to save it. Access your favorites by selecting the Favorites button in the left navigation pane on your Profile page.
  Viewing your favorite tweets
• Apps: There are lots of applications designed help you enhance your Twitter experience, from simply staying in touch on the go to managing the constant stream of updates. Some popular choices include the official Twitter mobile app, as well as TweetDeck and HootSuite, which are third-party apps for your desktop or mobile device.
  Using TweetDeck