Twitter - Still Can't Work It Out!

[Barquentine]

So I eventually signed up to Twitter okay! I selected a few people I'm following including my cousin. There were two random people I'd never heard of 'following' me but other than that I have no 'followers' - not even my cousin!
I saw a tweet by my cousin about her cat. So I tried to reply by selecting @Natalie and wrote her a message.
I cannot fathom whether she actually received that yet. Did I just do a tweet that only my 'followers' will see, or did I send her a message?
Also, if I see a tweet from someone I'm following and reply to it does everyone that follows them see it? Or if I 'retweet' it then who sees it? As for the # sign - well I'm not even going there till I understand what's going on!

[LazyGun]

Hmm. You can only send a private message ( known in twitter parlance as a direct message ) to a follower.

If you sent a message as described above, it will go to whoever has the twitter address @natalie which may or may not be your cousin. Additionally, that message will appear on your own timeline, so any followers you had/have would also see it. Think of twitter like a group meeting of followers; All can hear your messages, unless you expressly make them private - but you can only do that by sending a direct message to a follower.

The # or "trending" tag means that anyone following a particular trend that you have addressed with your hashtag will be able to see your message. Thats kind of like taking a megaphone and shouting out your message to the whole world...

https://sites.google.com/a/alaska.edu/iteach/resources/twitter

Not sure if any of that has been of any help whatsoever! :)

[Barquentine]

Than you Lazygun, that's actually pretty helpful. So even though Natalie isn't following me, she will have seen my tweet to her about her cat. I should have sent her a private message to stop my 'follower' seeing it.

And, if I make a comment say, #Trainspotting, then everyone interested in that topic (the film, not the train station hobby) would see it.

And do you know why I get push notifications from some of my followees but not others? I think I did click an On button somewhere in the myriad of options on my iPhone.

Thank you - the fog is clearing...slowly!

[Alston]

I can't resist asking ..." Are all who use Twitter classified as Twits."?

Al.

[Zacs-Master]

I keep trying with it but it's not very inuitive.