Hi there, you may have joined the popular Twitter service lately. If you have and don't have a clue how to use it, here's my simple and easy to follow guide on the service
First of all, Twitter is a great place to make friends, but please remember to not give these people personal information. It's great to know people in other countries (i do this too).
Tweets
Everything you do on Twitter is in 'tweets'. That's it. It's just a fancy and cooler name for tweets! There just a little shorter than one text message. 140 characters per message. (this includes everything like spaces and fancy smanch)
You can however, choose to close off into your private world. This is fine and can be done through the Settings link at the top on twitter.com.
@Replies
If someone wants to comment on something or give you a message they will reply with "@YourUserNameHere haha! love it". You'll notice this on twitter.com in the sidebar. Be sure to check for replies from strangers. This will help you get connected and be part of the 'flock'
Blocking people
One of the most important features is the block and report spam buttons. Even though most people on twitter are humans, there is spam robots and evil people. To block them, just go to their profile page and it's on the sidebar.
When you block someone, they can still look on your profile (they could anyway by logging out) but you can't follow eachother and @replies don't show up. This is great for getting rid of hate mailers!
Going Mobile
Don't think you can resist when you're out and about! You can use the mobile.twitter.com on the web or by sms. Using the service by SMS may charge you (usually receiving messages is free, but some networks don't include sending messages to twitter in your free texts). To find out the number for where you are go to twitter support
People with an Android phone, Blackberry or iPhone can download Twitter's official 'app' which makes the whole thing easier to use. Fear not, if you don't like Twitter's there is a lot more. People have made Twitter apps for practically every phone!
The Fail Whale
Unfortunately, there is times when people tweet too much (even though you are limited to around 200 an hour) and Twitter can't handle this and start showing the fail whale. This is normal, and the best thing is to check the twitter status page, as they are more than likely working on it right now. Sometimes some things like how many tweets you have may disappear or show up wrong. Don't worry! Twitter will fix them when everything's back to normal. (there's over a billion tweets to count!)
Trending Topics
Twitter processes every single tweet and decides which topics people are talking about most. These are called the Trending Topics. You've probably seen them on the home page of twitter.com. You can change to see what everyone in the world is talking about or just your country.
Lists
One of the newer things Twitter have launched is lists. Basically a list of tweeters (yeah, you're one now). That's it. You can follow these as you like.
Safety
Soon Twitter is making some changes to how it talks to the world and most application's won't need you to type your password, so make sure you know what you're doing before you tap it into anywhere. Most apps will take you to twitter.com (check in the address box) to login and give them access. The application will get a token, but this can't be linked to you at all.
Also watch out for spam email. Twitter will never ever ask you change your password by email. If you get anything asking this, just bin it.
Plus stay safe and enjoy twitter!