Learn Twitter-Speak for All Your Twitter-Based Marketing Initiatives

If you believe Rick, Twitter is an awesome and powerful marketing tool. I think it's a pointless waste of time. If you are more Rick than Dave, then you might be interested in this Twitter-to-English dictionary.

I was actually kind of jazzed to run across this, because while some of the terms are pretty common, some are, let's say, less than completely obvious. You might find it handy when you try to learn the ropes on Twitter:

FTW
For the win - This basically says that something rocks, a person has come through in a clutch, or someone or something has saved the day.

RT
Retweet - A retweet is a repost of someone else's tweet. It's a way to share something you saw with your own followers. Attribution of the original tweeter is needed.

H/T
Hat Tip - A hat tip is a acknowledgement that the tweet you are sending was entirely or partially inspired by someone else's tweet or conversation. Attribution of the original tweeter is needed.

#Hashtag
Hashtags are phrases or keywords that can be used to monitor tweets about a particular topic on Twitter's search engine [http://search.twitter.com/], Standards for hashtags are one word (#Conference) or multiple words strewn together without any spaces (#EventConferenceTheme).

DM
Direct Message - Twitter has the ability to send a direct message to a follower. These messages are not limited to 140 characters.

Fail Whale
Fail whale is Twitter's way of saying that something is broken.

URL Shortener
Since Twitter only allows 140 characters, every character counts. URL shortners like TinyURL[http://tinyurl.com/] convert any Web address into a shortened form. Some shortners let you track how many followers click on the link.

Photo by jmilles