tweeting

Tweeting is the act of posting short messages to a public feed on a social media service commonly known as Twitter. Tweets, or posts, are microblog updates that can include text, links, images, videos, and polls, and may be public or restricted by account settings. Tweets appear in a user’s timeline and may reach followers in real time or through shares.

Typical features include a 280-character limit, hashtags to categorize topics, and @mentions to address other users. Users can reply to tweets, quote or repost them (retweets), and indicate appreciation with likes. Longer ideas can be expressed as threads, which are linked sequences of tweets.

Twitter was launched in 2006 as a microblogging platform. The 140-character limit was doubled to 280 in 2017. Over time, features such as threaded conversations, live media, polls, and algorithmic ranking have expanded how information circulates and how users interact.

Tweeting is largely public by default, but accounts can be set to protected, restricting visibility to approved followers. The platform maintains community guidelines and policies on misinformation, harassment, and copyright, with enforcement through warnings, suspensions, or account removals.

The rapid and global reach of tweets has made them a central tool for news, politics, marketing, and cultural exchange, but it also raises concerns about privacy, manipulation, spam, and harmful content. Researchers and policymakers study its effects on public discourse and information flow.