Twitter is a community-driven communications medium – its users decide how it is used, and come up with much of the jargon used.  Some of the more common terms about Twitter include:

• Tweets – the messages sent out by users.
• Followers – the people who have elected to read your tweets
• Following – the people whose messages you are reading
• Tweeps – Twitter users, or your followers
• Retweet – a rebroadcast, or copy, of another’s tweet, often abbreviated RT to save space.  For example:  “RT @ncub8 Bowling marathon in Kingston raises 25K, thanks to all who participated!”
• @username – a Twitter user’s username preceded by @ will create a link to that tweep’s user page.  Starting the tweet in this way makes it into a “@reply” message – a direct message to one user that other users may read.
• Direct or DM - a private message sent to another user that only he/she can read.