Anatomy of a tweet - 2014 version

Lots of people use smartphone apps or things like Tweetdeck instead of Twitter.com's web browser so might not often see what a tweet looks like on its home planet. This post is partly informative, partly a historic record of how tweets looked in June 2014 :)

'Jun 6' (grey, top right) - this is the timestamp from which you can get the unique address for this tweet (if there had been lots of replies this would be the link to click on to see the thread in context). Knowing the tweet's URL is one way of finding it in Storify to add it to a story, though depending on circumstances it might be simpler to search for keywords or for the User.

a) (blue) Reply to this tweet. The default is pale grey but when you hover over it it becomes blue and the word 'reply' appears.

b) (green) Retweet, or unretweet - this button lets you retweet the tweet a first time and, if you click this button again to unretweet it (it will go grey) you can then retweet it again later (if you want to republish it a day or two later for example).

There's no limit, that I'm aware of, to the number of times you can un-retweet and then re-retweet a tweet - but remember that the person whose tweet it is will be notified with each new retweet and might block if it becomes annoying.

c) (green) Retweet number - tells you at a glance how many people have retweeted it. Click on the number to see who has retweeted it.

Note that despite their proximity, (b) and (c) are different icons with different information within them.

d) (orange) Favorite - this icon obviously lets you favourite a tweet and you can click it again to unfavourite (it then goes grey) and, if you wish, you can refavourite it again. Note the bit above on limits.

e) (orange) Number of people who've favourited - click on this icon to bring up a list of who's favourited a tweet.

Note that despite their proximity, (d) and (e) are different icons with different information within them.

f) (grey) - More options - the default is grey and when you hover over it the three dots will go blue. With this you can do some extra things with the tweet including getting the embed code(s) for putting into a blog (the live / interactive / real tweet is embedded below to illustrate). You can email it to anyone, including yourself, or you can mute / block the person who sent the tweet.

ICYMI: This @mrianleslie feature on how to cut fatal errors in medicine is fantastic. Superb, gripping stuff. http://t.co/OW4HgTjDDC
— David Dobbs (@David_Dobbs) June 6, 2014

Because the above tweet is live you can click on the link given to go and visit the article which, ICYMI (in case you missed it) was this:

Ian Leslie (4 June 2014) How mistakes can save lives: one man’s mission to revolutionise the NHS New Statesman "After the death of his wife following a minor operation, airline pilot Martin Bromiley set out to change the way medicine is practised in the UK – by using his knowledge of plane crashes."

From around the web
How to decode a tweet (27 January 2013) EdTechSandyK

Previous anatomy of a tweet posts on this blog
Anatomy of a tweet - the New New Twitter version (5 February 2012) this blog
Anatomy of a tweet - 'hidden' features of tweets (31 December 2009) this blog