What is a tweet? Meaning & function explained simply

What a tweet is is easy to explain: This is what a short message on the Twitter platform is called. With limited characters, you can exchange information on current topics and trends there.

What a tweet is: twittering on Twitter

Twitter is one of the most popular social networks and, in contrast to Instagram, TikTok and Co, relies mainly on short, crisp texts instead of pictures and videos.

• “To tweet” translates as to tweet. A tweet is therefore a short text that users publish on Twitter. Fittingly, Twitter’s logo is a blue bird.

• A tweet can be a maximum of 280 characters long. However, you can also extend it with a picture, video or GIF. Twitter threads trick the character limit. Here, the twitterer simply uses the comment function to expand their own post.

• Tweets consist of a short message or opinion and hashtags. These are important so that other users can assign your tweet to a specific topic and find it underneath. Under football, for example, you will find all posts that have been published on this topic. You can place the hashtag at the end of the tweet or in the text if the linked word appears in it.

• To create a tweet, register with Twitter and type your text into the “What’s new?” field on the homepage, for example. Click on “Tweet” and it will be published. If you want to remove a post again, click on the three small dots next to the tweet and go to “delete”.

• If you want to address the tweet to a specific person or page, you can use the @ symbol in your message. Just type the first letters of the name after the @ and Twitter will automatically suggest matching accounts.

• As a new user, you can first introduce yourself on Twitter with a few exciting or curious facts about yourself and use the hashtag firsttweet. Or you can jump straight into a topic of your choice and tweet away.