If you've decided to take the Twitter plunge, you may find the sign-up process a bit confusing in places. This post will walk you through it step-by-step so you can be up and tweeting in no time.

Go to the Twitter home page (www.twitter.com).

Click the Get Started Now button.

Here are a few notes to consider before filling out the sign-up form:

• You can enter anything you want in the Full Name box, but if you want friends to find you, it's a good idea to put your real name.
• Your username will be what you will use to log in to your account and will also become part of your twitter URL. For example, mine is EKricfalusi and you'll find me at www.twitter.com/EKricfalusi. The maximum number of characters allowed is 15.
• A few seconds after you've finished typing, it will tell you if the name is available. You can mix upper and lower-case letters, which will show up when your username is displayed, but it's actually not case-sensitive, i.e. even though my name shows as EKricfalusi, no one else would be able to choose ekricfalusi or eKRicfALusi for that matter.
• You can also use numbers in your username, as well as underscores and hyphens. However, I wouldn't recommend using the latter two if you can avoid it, because it's going to be easy for people to accidentally go to another user's page when looking for you. For example, if someone chose E_Kricfalusi, it's likely a lot of people would forget the underscore and end up on my page instead.
• Having said all of the above, I wouldn't stress too much about what username you choose right now because, unlike a lot of applications, you can actually change it later and your tweets will all dynamically change to show your new name.
• Passwords must be at least 6 characters long, and they'll let you know how strong it is as you're typing it. For hints on choosing a good password, check out my earlier post, Password Control in 3 Easy Steps.
• Your e-mail address will not appear on your profile. It's only for Twitter to be able to send you notices about your account.

Click the Create My Account button.

You'll now be prompted to let Twitter check the address books from your other web-based e-mail services to see if they can find Twitter users you already know. I'll cover this in a later post, so click Skip This Step for now.

Next you'll be prompted with a list of users (randomly generated, as far as I can tell) and asked if you want to follow any of them. Unless you're desperate to know what's going on with Britney Spears or the World Economic Forum right now, click the Finish button.

Congratulations! You're now a Tweep.

You'll now be prompted to write your first tweet, find some friends, or set up your phone for Twittering.

However, I think it's a good idea to finish setting up your profile first, so I'll be covering that, as well as following people and tweeting, in tomorrow's post.

In the meantime, if you want to get a sense of how others are using Twitter, click the Everyone link in the right-hand nav bar. You'll see the most current list of tweets from all users on the system.

Posted in How To, Social Media, Twitter