Four things You Probably Don’t Know About Twitter

bymartyn01202

410 followers

16 years ago

Here are four things I found out about Twitter that aren't immediately obvious, so hopefully they may be of use to you too.

1) Link stats

Because of the 140 character limit, URLs you post on Twitter are usually shortened. The default URL shortener in Tweetdeck is bit.ly. So the short URL for my last post might be http://bit.ly/ac4GWm.

Here's where it gets interesting. Add a + to the end of the URL so it becomes http://bit.ly/ac4GWm+ and you get a page with click statistics as well as info on who re-tweeted it.

2) Eat less spam

If you follow a lot of people, you'll get a lot of spammy direct messages (DMs). You can actually massively reduce these spam DMs.

A lot of them come via the SocialOomph platform and they kindly allow you to opt out.

visit the site to find the opt out option.

3) You haven't been hacked

When a Twitter account is compromised and you find your account is sending spam DM's and tweets you didn't write, people tend to assume someone has somehow got their password.

This isn't usually the case and changing your password will have no effect. The actual culprit is usually rogue third-party applications that you've authorised to access your account. If you try lots of different Twitter tools that are out there then you're more likely to fall foul of this.

All you need to do is go to twitter.com and log in to your account. Then click “Settings” in the menu at the top-right and go to the “Connections” tab. You'll see a list of applications that are authorised to access your account. Revoke access for any you don't use any more.

4) I know you're looking for a new job

When you add a tweet to your favourites, every one can see it. Your list of favourite tweets is exposed to the world so be careful what you add there.

For instance, a journalist I follow “favourited” a tweet advertising a job. If I were his employer I'd be raising an eyebrow!