A hashtag is any word on a social media website preceded by a “#”. It is an an easy way to categorise a posting and join conversations on a particular subject. It also enables you to search for tweets or Facebook posts on the same topic. The hash symbol has been used in information technology to highlight a special meaning since the early 1970s.
Hashtags first appeared on Twitter in 2007, and gradually became more popular as people found them useful for locating a topic. Three years later, Twitter introduced ‘trending topics’ on its homepage, displaying hashtags that are being accessed more rapidly than the rest – in other words, more and more people are joining in the conversation, sending in comments and replying to other tweets.
These days, hashtags are everywhere. Politicians use them (#zuma), as do sporting events (#super15) and television shows such as Idols (#saidols).
Hashtags in action
An early example of Twitter and hashtags in operation was after the US Airways Flight 1549 crashed into the Hudson River in New York in January 2009. Witnesses began tweeting about the accident almost immediately after it happened (long before the media reacted) and soon, more people were sending tweets. Someone then posted the hashtag ‘#flight1549’, and this ‘went viral’ (spread rapidly across the Internet). From then on, if anyone wanted more on the topic, he or she simply went to a Google search using the keywords ‘#flight1549’.
How to use them
- Avoid lengthy hashtags.
- Keep them short and simple.
- Check the spelling of your hashtags before posting tweets. If you spell your tagged word incorrectly, no one will be able to find your message.
- Hashtags must contain no spaces. If you post a hashtag with a space, any words after the space are ignored.
- Don’t overuse hashtags – this is regarded as spamming. As a rule of thumb, don’t use more than three hashtags in a post.
And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter: @FarmersWeeklySA.
Sources: www.twubs.com; www.techforluddites.com; www.adlibbing.org; and www.twitter.about.com.
