On November 28 senior Chris Mullis tweeted: “@paulwalltall I’m looking at you right now in windigo, and you may need a flow chop now #justsayin”

Five years ago most people would ask, what is a “@paulwalltall”? Is that # a typo? Why is Chris Mullis looking at me right now? Why is he telling everyone?

Twitter’s tweets, #hashtags, @mentions, and followers, can be hard to pick up on. Ask any tweeter to explain the phenomenon and they’ll find themselves at a loss for words. I’ll try my best.

Let’s begin with the concept of a “tweet”. A tweet is a bite-sized message containing 140 characters or less. It can be something newsworthy, artsy, insightful, emotional, or funny.

Within this 140 character word limit you can include a hashtag: a “#” followed by a word or phrase that embodies or comments on the topic of your tweet. Technically, hashtags are used for people to track what others have to say about a common topic such as #blackfriday. If enough people tweet the same hashtag, it becomes a “trending topic”, meaning that it’s one of the most popular topics on Twitter.

Tweets can also be used for direct communication. In this case, tweeple “mention” their fellow tweeter. A mention involves the “@” symbol, followed by a person’s Twitter name. Mentioning another person in a tweet will send them a special notification via phone alert, email, or text.

Following someone on Twitter means subscribing to their tweets. Each Twitter user has a Twitter feed that displays the tweets of who they follow in chronological order.

Through Twitter, students at Edina High School find out what our friends are doing without seeming creepy. We receive school updates from athletics @edinahornets and the principle @Doc_Loc, jokes from @FillWerrell and @Lord_Voldemort7, and the occasional hot gossip from each other. We find refuge on Twitter when we’re bored, can’t sleep, looking for plans, or find ourselves in awkward situations—you know, the kind where you just need to look down at your phone. 140 characters (or less) never seemed so helpful.

To answer your first question, @paulwalltall is senior Paul Nordquist. In plain English, Chris’ tweet from November 28 reads “Hey Paul, I’m looking at your right now in Windigo, and you may need a flow chop now (Just saying)”

On December 3 @paulwalltall announced to the world that he was “Finally getting a haircut…you’re welcome 

@That1kidchris”