There are fourteen different elements that can be embedded in tweets on your Timeline in Twitter. It’s highly unlikely that you will find all of these in a single tweet. To cut down on verbosity and repetition I’ve cut and pasted them all into a single pseudo tweet screenshot:
- The tweet writer’s profile picture
- The tweet writer’s Twitter @name
- The tweet writer’s User name – e.g. John Smith
- The “recycled” icon shows that the tweet you’re reading is a Retweet
- The name of the person who retweeted this message.
- The little balloon indicates a Google Maps reference in the tweet.
- Image – the tweet contains a picture
- Video – a video is embedded in this tweet
- Reply – the tweet you’re viewing is a reply to an earlier tweet.
- Expand – clicking here expands the sidebar to “drill down” on the current tweet.
- The age of the tweet i.e. how long ago it was posted.
- The #hashtag and is automatically hyper linked.
- This is pretty much a standard hyperlink to an external location.
- Also known as an @mention shows that this tweet is referencing another Twitter user. Clicking on the @username expands the sidebar to show a summary profile of the person.
Click Action: (what happens when you click on the items)
- (1) or (2) expands the sidebar and displays a summary of the tweeter’s profile
- (6 to 10) or a clean area of the tweet expands the sidebar and “drills down” on the tweet to display: @replies, profile links of people mentioned, related tweets and more.
- (12) takes you to Twitter Search and automatically queries Twitter for the latest Tweets on the hashtag.
- (13) is pretty much self-explanatory… it opens up the site that the tweeter wants you to go visit in a new browser tab or window
- (14) opens up a summary the @mentioned person’s profile
