Like most online communities, the Twitter world has developed its own unique language. Here’s a basic cheat sheet to help you jump in without feeling like you need a translator.

• Tweet – Another word for a 140-character update.
• Tweeps/Tweeple – Short for “twitter people.” Your friends and followers in the twitter community.
• Hashtag – A hashtag is used to keep track of a topic that many people are talking about. The hashtag is the pound sign (#) followed by the chosen descriptive word of the topic. As an example, during the Blissdom conference, whenever someone wrote something about the conference, they would end their tweet with this – #blissdom09.
• DM – Stands for direct message. You can send a direct message to any of your twitter followers. DMs are private between the sender and receiver.
• RT – Stands for Re-Tweet. A retweet is when you copy and paste something someone else said and tweet it yourself. When you retweet, it is common to put RT followed by the original tweeters name and the tweet.
• Fail Whale – When something goes wrong on the backend of twitter, or when too many people are using it at the same time, you will automatically be redirected to the page shown below. That is called the “Fail Whale.”