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

Anatomy of a tweet - the New New Twitter version

I wrote an 'anatomy of a tweet' post back in December 2009 but rather a lot has changed on Twitter since then with two major changes (known as #newtwitter and #newnewtwitter).

As always the tweet you see on screen has loads of hidden information and links to things within it and so here are some of them. I've used Neil's tweet with permission - he's one of my oldest pals in real life :)

Picture 1 shows a tweet on my friend Neil's profile page. 

This first picture is a screenshot of a tweet that I've both favourited (denoted by the partial orange star on the right) and retweeted (shown by the green arrow on the right). There are several clickable links in the original tweet including the Amazon link (which goes to the rather brilliant spoof reviews of the Mr Men series). I couldn't get the View Media link to show me anything but quite often if someone's added a photograph or YouTube video the panel will widen a bit and you can see it. The 5h doesn't go anywhere but clicking on @OldenGlove will bring up the popup version of Neil's profile.

If you hover over the tweet in Neil's profile list...

Picture 2 shows the tweet still on the profile page (in a list of other tweets) - all that's happened is I've hovered over it.

...then a few more things appear. Because I've already retweeted and faved this tweet the icons / text for those show up in green and orange but normally all three (reply, retweet, favorite) appear in blue. The Open link just enlarges the tweet and if the tweet had also been sent in reply to someone else then clicking open will bring up the tweet it was sent in reply to. You don't have to click on the word Open, that white space will do just fine.

When you click on the tweet it will expand... 

Picture 3 - this is the expanded tweet, but it's still in the person's profile, within a list of other tweets.

Opening the tweet can show you embedded media, or the chain of tweets in a threaded conversation. The bit saying 4:56 PM - 3 Feb 12 via web tells you the time and date the tweet was sent and by what means. 'Via web' means via Twitter.com but you might also see things like UberTwitter or Echofon etc appearing here - the timestamp used to be the place where Twitter put the tweet's own URL (each tweet has an URL, this means that every tweet has its own web page!) but now this is the Details link. Clicking the white space  or 'Close' will restore the tweet to its smaller size. Clicking on Details will open the tweet into its own page.

The tweet below has its own page at https://twitter.com/#!/OldenGlove/status/165478688371126272

Picture 4 - the tweet is no longer in a list with other tweets but in its own page. I've hovered over the little disembodied head to bring up some extra information. Note also the Embed this Tweet link.

The only major thing of interest when the tweet's on its own page is the Embed this Tweet link which takes you to a page where you can copy some code and embed it in a blog (on Blogger you'd need to click in the 'HTML' tab of the editing window rather than the default 'Compose'). I'd have to say that the end product isn't too impressive in Blogger (you can see what it looks like below) possibly it's better in other blog platforms (apparently WordPress supports the Shortcode version quite well so use that instead of the html code that shows up in the popup window).

I also hovered over the 'person' icon in the top right - there are some other options available in there, in particular the ability to Turn off Retweets. Selecting this option means you won't see the automatic RTs that people send (the manual RTs where people copy and paste text and stick the word "RT" in front of it will still show up though).

Here's what the embedded tweet looks like (html)

This is lovely: amazon.co.uk/gp/cdp/member-…
— Neil Cole (@OldenGlove) February 3, 2012

Anatomy of a tweet - 'hidden' features of tweets

OK not that 'hidden' but I don't know if eveyone knows about them and I've got the bug for writing 'how to' posts at the moment.

I expect everyone's worked out that tweets look different if your mouse is hovering over them, but if not, compare (unhovered-over tweet at top) and contrast (same tweet beneath it, but this time hovered-over).



Because it's my tweet I get the option to delete it - highlighted by the red oval. All tweets have a star option (yellow highlight) that appears when you hover over them, clicking on this allows the tweet to be favourited. Incidentally you can find out which of your own tweets have been favourited by using services like Favotter (http://favotter.matope.com/en/) or Favstar (http://favstar.fm/).

Notice the bit, which I've not circled, that says 'about 4 hours ago from web' - there can be up to two links in this phrase (though in this particular example there's just one).

Were you to click on the 'about 4 hours ago' bit you'd go to a page which contains the tweet by itself, and has this URL http://twitter.com/JoBrodie/status/7237369855. This can be useful if you want to direct someone to a particular tweet, rather than to someone's general stream of tweets.

Where it says 'from web' it might equally say 'from Twitterfeed' or 'from Tweetdeck' and clicking on these will take you to the company's link telling you about these services. 'From web' doesn't take you anywhere.

If someone's replying to someone it may say 'in reply to XYZ'. Clicking on that will usually take you to the tweet to which they're replying - useful for following a thread backwards - but only if they used the 'Reply' function (note that the 'in reply to XYZ' link doesn't distinguish between a tweet that's sent by clicking 'Reply' and a tweet that someone starts typing, putting the person's @name first).

The pic below needs to be read in reverse... Tweet 3 is the first in a series of tweet exchanges that I posted to my Twitterstream, Tweet 2 is @Zeno001's reply to me, and Tweet 1 is my reply to him. If you saw these tweets in your Twitterstream (you could view these if you were following both of us, or if you clicked on either of our profiles) then you could follow the thread. Admittedly it's not the most fascinating exchange but I think the gist of how to follow a thread is clear.



If you use a service like Tweetdeck then when you 'reply' to someone then it's possible that the threading of tweets will be lost (it depends on whether or not the end reader is viewing on the web, or via phone I think).

I think the unusual thing here is that there are 'hidden' links on a webpage - this seems to me to be something that disappeared fairly early on, on most websites (perhaps an accessibility issue - it's now usually very clear what is or isn't a link).