Hashtags
Want to get the most out of tweeting? Start using Twitter Hash Tags.
What's that? No, it's not a breakfast food made out of left over corned beef...
"Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They're like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.
Hashtags were developed as a means to create "groupings" on Twitter, without having to change the basic service. The hash symbol is a convention borrowed primarily from IRC channels, and later from Jaiku's channels."
By assigning a tag to your post, you include it in a group of similarly tagged items - so they can be counted and searched and referenced by you and other users.
By now, many of you are familiar with the at symbol "@" which provides instructions to Twitter to direct your response to a particular follower/followee on your Twitter interface. Someone tweets something I find interesting, and I want to direct my response to that tweeter, so I type @{user name} before my response. Now everyone knows I mean my response to refer to a particular user. (This also aids third party apps like TweetDeck to distinguish tweets as personal or general.)
Go to hashtags.org to see real-time tracking of Twitter hashtags. Opt-in by following @hashtags to have your hashtags tracked. You can find out what the most popular tweet topics are, or start a tweet topic yourself.
How to use hashtags?
"First, follow @hashtags on Twitter. They will follow you back automatically, and your hashtags will be tracked.
"Next, start using hashtags in your tweets, preceding key words. It can be helpful to do a little research first, to find out if the subject you're tweeting already has an established hashtag. Also, check Suggestions and Tips and Example Uses below for ettiquette and general usage.
"Finally, track other tweets on the subjects you're interested in (ie: those containing the appropriate hashtags) by browsing/searching at Hashtags.org or TwitterGroups. You can set it up with RSS feeds as well."
What's that? No, it's not a breakfast food made out of left over corned beef...
"Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They're like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.
Hashtags were developed as a means to create "groupings" on Twitter, without having to change the basic service. The hash symbol is a convention borrowed primarily from IRC channels, and later from Jaiku's channels."
By assigning a tag to your post, you include it in a group of similarly tagged items - so they can be counted and searched and referenced by you and other users.
By now, many of you are familiar with the at symbol "@" which provides instructions to Twitter to direct your response to a particular follower/followee on your Twitter interface. Someone tweets something I find interesting, and I want to direct my response to that tweeter, so I type @{user name} before my response. Now everyone knows I mean my response to refer to a particular user. (This also aids third party apps like TweetDeck to distinguish tweets as personal or general.)
Go to hashtags.org to see real-time tracking of Twitter hashtags. Opt-in by following @hashtags to have your hashtags tracked. You can find out what the most popular tweet topics are, or start a tweet topic yourself.
How to use hashtags?
"First, follow @hashtags on Twitter. They will follow you back automatically, and your hashtags will be tracked.
"Next, start using hashtags in your tweets, preceding key words. It can be helpful to do a little research first, to find out if the subject you're tweeting already has an established hashtag. Also, check Suggestions and Tips and Example Uses below for ettiquette and general usage.
"Finally, track other tweets on the subjects you're interested in (ie: those containing the appropriate hashtags) by browsing/searching at Hashtags.org or TwitterGroups. You can set it up with RSS feeds as well."
Comments