Adept “social networkers,” will understand that Twitter consists solely of "status" updates, with a catch. The catch is that all of your status updates have to be 140 characters or less - not 140 words - 140 characters, which means spaces count.

But for those who aren’t Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Tumblr or Flickr friendly, think of Twitter as the opening to every phone call you’ve ever made to a close friend. After pleasantries are exchanged, you ask “What are you doing?” or “What’s up?” to gauge what’s been going on in their life. Many use Twitter to keep up with friends and relatives in the same way.

After visiting www.twitter.com and starting an account, browsing the website and the public timeline of updates can seem daunting. With all of the abbreviations floating around, familiarizing yourself with a few Twitter-specific terms could prove useful.

A "tweet" is an individual Twitter update. To "follow" someone is to subscribe to their tweets. Following works just the way it sounds. There is no social relationship involved, no mandate to follow anyone back, and other users don't need permission or confirmation to follow you. There is a "block" option to prevent someone from following you if the need arises. When you follow someone, their updates show on your personalized home page, but you don’t show up on theirs unless they choose to follow you.

Twitterers (also called tweeters, twits or tweeps) talk to each other via "@replies." To talk to another Twitter user, type “@username,”  in the body of the tweet. That user will then see your update on their @replies page. If you want to talk to someone privately, use Direct Messages. Character limits apply to "DMs" too.

Twitter is very easy to use with cell phones too. Text your updates to their short code to send your updates to the web. You can also receive @replies as texts on your cell phone too. There are free applications available for download on smartphones as well.

To get the most out of Twitter, you should follow people that have information you crave or ideas you value. Searching Twitter is easy - every page has a search box that allows you to find people to follow based on their areas of expertise, their previous tweets, or simply their username. For news junkies, almost all of CNN's anchors have twitter accounts that give behind-the-scenes looks at the stories they feature.

There is something for everyone - doctors, lawyers, teachers, financial analysts, gymnasts, musicians, visual artists, etc. have informal communities for exchanging information. Many local television stations use the site to disseminate breaking news from big to small, like hazardous chemical leak warnings, election results and traffic jams. Municipalities can use the site to remind citizens of city council meetings or announcements. Bloggers use the site to drive traffic to their personal websites by sharing links and pictures.

Once you've amassed a network of friends on the site (people you follow who also follow you back), you can take advantage of the "crowdsourcing" effect by sending out queries to the masses and getting help with projects or simple questions. Instead of individually calling or e-mailing all of your friends who are interested in skateboards, you can send out a tweet asking about maneuverability on the RipStik and get links to YouTube videos, user reviews, and sale prices all on your replies page.

After getting help from the crowd, check out what other users are talking about by taking a look a the "Trending Topics" list featured on the sidebar of every page. This top ten list is increasingly becoming a barometer for the pop culture, political and social commentary. Trending Topics are words or phrases that show up in a large percentage of tweets from all across the site and the world. For example, "Iran election" has practically been on the top ten list for the past three weeks, and on Thursday, June 25, the top ten Topics were all Michael Jackson-related. The reports of his death also dominated Google and Yahoo, top search engines.

Though Michael Jackson dominated Trending Topics, he has not been the only celebrity to increase Twitter publicity. Former "That 70's Show" star Ashton Kutcher and CNN talk show host Larry King engaged in a competition this spring to see who could raise the most money for malaria preventing bed nets by being the first to gather the most followers. Kutcher won. Pop culture fixtures like actors, politicians and musicians have pages and often reply to their followers personally. Basketball player Shaquille O'Neal even encourages his fans to come by and talk to him when they see him in public. In fact, in February of this year, blogger Jesse Bearden wrote about he and his friend Sean's Twitter-inspired trip to a local diner after noticing that "Shaq" was tweeting from the locale. Click here to view the story at Jesse's blog.

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