Many people have heard of twitter, but they don’t know how it’s used or how they can get started.  Twitter is a real-time site because it’s used to share short messages, to many people, as soon as the event happens.  Twitter can help make lasting friendships and business contacts.     If someone wants to create a twitter account, he or she should go to www.twitter.comand sign up for a free account.  This can be done by entering a name, email address, and password.  A follower is a user who can read your tweets.  When a new user wants to get followers, that new user should follow people, since some of those followers will follow that new user.  Another way to get followers is by replying to tweets.  When that happens, some of that other person’s followers will see the reply, and some of them will follow the new user.     When someone sends a message to all of that user’s followers, the message is a tweet.  A tweet can include a maximum of 140 characters.  As someone types a tweet, the site gives a countdown of how many available characters can be in that tweet.  If the number is negative, that means that the tweet is that number of characters too long.  Another important term is retweet, which means sending someone else’s tweet to all of the retweeters followers.  If someone clicks on “Retweet,” it states, “retweeted from @username” and it shows the tweet.     Each twitter user may create lists of people he or she follows.  This can be helpful, if a user follows many people, for different purposes, including politics, businesses, and/or charities.  To create a list, the user needs to go his or her profile page and click on the “Lists” tab.  After that, the user will click on “Create list.”  The user will type a name of the list, a description of it, and whether it will be seen by the public or only that user.  After that, the user will click “Save list.”  To add someone to a list, the user will click on a person’s icon and choose “Add or remove from lists.”  A list of the user’s lists will appear, and that user will check the list to which that icon will be added.     All of this information can be helpful for new twitter users.  Twitter can help users promote their blog, business, church, charity, and/or political campaign.