13 keyboard shortcuts for Twitter addicts

The next time you take a break from your labors and check Twitter.com on your computer, you can flit about the social-networking site more efficiently with a few keyboard shortcuts.

Here is a baker’s dozen of the most helpful of the bunch.

1. Page down and up

As you can on other web pages, hit the spacebar to page down your feed and Shift-spacebar to page up.

2. Next and previous tweet

Instead of scrolling or paging down, hit the J key to move to the next tweet in your feed. Hit the K key to move back to the previous tweet.

3. Refresh feed

Hit the . [period] key to refresh your feed and load new tweets.

4. Open tweet

With a tweet selected, hit Enter to open a tweet. Hit Escape to close the tweet.

5. L for Like

With a tweet selected, hit the L key to like it.

6. R for Reply

With a tweet selected, hit the R key to reply to it.

7. T for Retweet

With a tweet selected, hit the T key to retweet it.

8. N for New tweet

Hit the N key to open the Compose new tweet window.

9. B for block

Hit the B key to block the user of the selected tweet.

10. U for mute

Hit the U key to mute the user of the selected tweet.

11. DM me

Hit the M key to open the New Message window to send a direct message.

12. Search

Hit the / key to place your cursor in Twitter’s search bar.

13. G+

Not Google+. Let us never speak again of Google+. With Twitter, there are 10 keyboard shortcuts that involve the G key plus another key to go to one of your timelines. G+H takes you home to your main feed, for example. G+N takes you to your notifications, and G+P takes you to your profile.

Bonus shortcut: hit Shift-? to see the menu below of all of Twitter’s keyboard shortcuts:

If Facebook is more your social-networking jam, then I have 20 shortcuts for faster Facebook navigation. And for Reddit addicts, I’ve got 10 Reddit shortcuts for more efficient time-killing.