Introduction to Twitter. Part 3

Twitter Chats

Have you ever tried to take part in a twitter chat and been completely lost? If it's a lively one, it can move very fast. By the time you have written what you want to say, the conversation has moved on. In your panic, you forget to add the hashtag and your tweet doesn't even show up. Every time you look up there are 101 new tweets waiting for you to refresh the page...you know what I mean? Well, there is a solution.....Tweetchat. (There are a couple of solutions, but this is the one I like.)

The way a chat works is that everyone adds a particular hashtag to their tweets. Then when you do a search for that tag, every tweet containing it will come up in your stream. Most of them have a specified day and time when people sign in together and chat live. There are loads of chats on twitter, but if you want to explore gifted issues, the two to look for are #gtchat at 5pm and midnight GMT on Fridays and #gtie at 9pm GMT on Sundays.

Tweetchat, described below, has been a lifesaver for many a twitter chatter but it looks like it's about to disappear due to changes with Twitter. For the moment, it is working intermittently. if anyone knows of a good substitute, let us know!

Step 1: Go to tweetchat.com and click "sign in":

Step 3: Allow tweetchat to access your account:

Fill in your username and twitter password and click "Allow".

Step 3: Find your chat.

Enter the name of the chat you are looking for in the box at the top and click "Go". I have entered gtie this time.

Step 4: Get set, go.

1. This chat refreshes itself automatically, but is set to do so every 10 seconds. If you click on "refresh speed" you can slide this down to 5 seconds. (if you ever find yourself at a particularly lively chat and have trouble keeping up, just increase the refresh speed!)

2. If you click on this symbol opposite a tweet, it sets you up to reply to that person by making their name appear in the box at the top for you. 

3. Clicking this symbol opposite a tweet will retweet it by making the text appear in the box at the top, all ready to go.

One other big advantage to tweetchat is that it automatically adds the hashtag to the end of each tweet. So you just need to write your message and click "Update". 

With all these things done for you, you can now sit back and enjoy chatting!