#beatcancer Please RT

eBay/Paypal and MillerCoors are donating a cent per hashtag (via tweet, Facebook update, or blog post) for cancer research. The campaign is aiming for a Guinness World Record “for the distribution of the largest mass message through social media” in one day.

For those of you who do not do the Twitter thing, a couple of explanations:

• Hashtags (#) are used on Twitter to highlight a topic of discussion. One can click on a hashtag like #beatcancer and see all of the tweets which carry that particular hashtag. This is useful for some people if they are trying to follow the news about a topic and for marketing.
• Tweets simply are messages someone sends out kinda like a text message on a cell phone or like updating your status on Facebook. You are limited to 140 characters per tweet.
• RT stands for Retweet. This means to send the message out again. When someone Retweets your Twitter message then their followers can see the message. If enough people RT your message it could be seen by the entire Twitter community. This is done by copying their message including their username putting RT in front of their username and message. For example: RT @oldmanblurts My mother #beatcancer (This assumes my message was My mother #beatcancer)
• A follower is someone who follows your tweets. When you send out a tweet it appears on your followers home page.
• The @ symbol is used in front of a person's username so the message being sent will appear on their Twitter home page. Also if they are using a cell phone for their tweets the @ symbol will send the message to their phone as a text message. I only use the web page so I am not too familiar with how Tweets work on a cell phone.

I hope that clears up a few things about Twitter. I enjoy using it myself. So sign up for Twitter and start tweeting to the world. You can follow me on Twitter. My username is @oldmanblurts. Just click the link and it will take you to my profile page and then click the follow button.

Happy Tweeting and Thanks for supporting #beatcancer.