Of course you will need to sign up for Twitter if you want to "party" with us. Just go to twitter.com, click the "sign up now" option and follow the directions. Very easy.

A Twitter Party is a great way for a group of people to exchange information on a specific topic. Because so many people are tweeting at the same time, on multiple subjects, it is necessary to identify the Tweets/group of people that pertain to our specific subject matter/Twitter party. This is done via a Hash Tag:

• A Hash Tag is any subject name preceded by the pound sign #

• The Hash Tag is included in all Tweets and is counted as part of the 140 allowable characters per Tweet message

• The Hash Tag for our current Twitter Party is #Passoverpty.

• Because the flow of tweets are so fast, we copy the hash tag (Control C) only once and past it in each tweet using Control V

• An example of using a hash tag during a Twitter Party:

Koshereye welcomes everyone to our Passover Twitter Party. #Passoverpty

We do not use the online Twitter (twitter.com) to follow and tweet during a party. There is an easier tool available, that is multi-columned, and easier to follow and use. It is free and we love it!! It allows you to create additional columns that will only display those topics that are of specific interest to you.

In fact, we use TweetDeck almost exclusively. We have a large number of followers and we follow many people. This tool has columns that sorts out those tweets that are exclusively for us. Tweets sent from TweetDeck are also seen in twitter.com. For the Twitter Party we will create a column, #passoverpty, that will display only those tweets containing that specific hashtag.

The software is called TweetDeck.  It feeds from Twitter and you use the same Twitter ID/Password.

http://www.tweetdeck.com/

Just follow the instructions for downloading. When you have completed the download , you will be ready. The icon for TweetDeck is on the Desktop and that is how you access it.

After accessing TweetDeck, you will see  3-4 columns:

• All Friends - this column shows tweets from everyone you follow and the tweets sent by you

• Mentions - this column shows tweets that mention you. For us, this is important as we do not miss any tweets that require our response.

• Direct Messages - these contain direct messages from/to you

Now, most important, you can create new columns that allow you to follow specified topics. For instance, we have one that shows us all tweets that contain kosher, #kosher.  Not all of the ones we see are relevant to the subject matter!

For our last party, we created a column that only showed the tweets containing the party defined hash tag.  For this party we will be creating a new column.

Directions for creating new column:

1. On the TweetDeck screen, Click on the circled sign.

2.  The following  page will appear. Enter #passoverpty in search bar. Press "enter".

3.  TweetDeck main screen will display. Notice the new column. It contains the Tweets we sent announcing the Twitter Party. During the party, it will contain everyone's Tweets.  They will also appear in the Mentions column.

You will need to follow us, KosherEye.  You can do that via your online Twitter.com page.

We hope this brief explanation was helpful.  Now let's Party (Twitter that is)!!