Following in Twitter is quite similar to following in Hashnode.
You follow public figures to get their tweets (status updates) in your feed.
or e.g. follow newspapers accounts to get news tweets in your feed ..etc.
People will follow you also to get your tweets.
you can mention someone in your tweet using the @ symbol same as in hashnode and facebook.
and also you can inbox someone with a personal message like in facebook
There is also hashtags ..
If you click on a hashtag it will open all the tweets that contain this hashtag, this is very useful when you want to know about a specific hashtag subject, you just click the hashtag to see what people are saying about this subject, you can also join the subject by putting the hashtag in your tweets