Last November I wrote an article in this column introducing readers to Twitter. Now that the site has grown in popularity, I thought I would write a follow-up article describing some of the special language that has developed in Twitter and some of the associated applications that have cropped up to help you navigate the Twitterverse more easily.

First, a quick review of my last article (available on the Redwood Technology Consortium Web site). Twitter is a micro-blogging site that launched in October 2006. It is a way for people to share what they’re currently doing or thinking about in 140 characters or less. It gained popularity as a site for friends to keep each other updated on what is going on in their daily lives, but has become a tool for business and nonprofit promotion, breaking news and all kinds of other uses.

As soon as you get started you’ll probably notice some strange abbreviations and symbols in user’s tweets, or posted messages. First, the @ symbol preceding a name indicates a Twitter user. For example, if I say “@NASA has some interesting stuff going on” I am referring to NASA’s tweets. To see this user’s Twitter page, you would go to twitter.com/nasa. You can see how many @ replies you’ve received by clicking that item from the right-hand menu on Twitter. Your @ replies will be sent as any other tweet, so all of your followers can see what you’ve written. To send someone a direct message just between the two of you, click on the Direct Message link and choose which of your followers you wish to contact.

RT means “retweeting.” If you have seen a tweet that you find interesting and want to share it with users who are following you, you can send it out from your account and give credit to the original user by using either “RT @username.” Some users cut and paste the exact tweet and some add their own comments to the tweet and say it came “via @username.”

Because Twitter only allows 140 characters, users look for ways to shorten messages. When adding a link to your site, you can shorten it using a site like http://cli.gs, recommended to me by Cassondra Schindler, @cassondra. This site will shorten your URL and will also provide numbers on how many hits it receives, so you can monitor what kinds of links are of more interest to your followers than others.

Many Twitter applications have sprung up in the past year. My personal favorite is Twitpic, which allows you to share images. The site allows you to upload an image and type in a message that will then be broadcast via your Twitter account. It’s a fun way to share what you’re doing with more than just words. Twitpic also keeps metrics so you can monitor how many people have clicked on the images you shared.

Twitterfall is a site that allows you to see the latest trends on Twitter. It has a live feed and updates dynamically with the latest topics being discussed, or you can search for topics of interest to you.

A few applications have sprung up that help you manage your views of Twitter. TweetDeck, recommended by Bob Morse (@bobmorse), allows you to create groups of friends you follow, monitor certain subject areas using saved searches, and share photos on Twitpic. Mike Dronkers (@mikedronkers) recommends Twitterberry, an application for Blackberries that allows users to see what friends are doing, upload pictures, and send direct messages to other users. Tweetie, used by Cassondra Schindler, is an application for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Haven’t checked out Twitter yet? Go to twitter.com and sign up for an account. You can customize how your page looks to add branding or interesting images and learn what’s going on in areas of interest to you. There’s a lot more to discover, but I hope this article has enticed you to learn more. See you Twitterverse.

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Daria Topousis telecommutes to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and serves on the Board of Directors of the Redwood Technology Consortium (www.redwoodtech.org). She twitters at twitter.com/dariat.

Copyright 2009, Eureka Times Standard Newspaper. The print version of this article first appeared in the 5/14/09 edition of the Times Standard.