What the Heck is a Hashtag?
Reposting from my former blog…
For years, I thought that Twitter was just for narcissists. I thought that all you found on Twitter were things like “I’m going for a pizza” and “selfies” – you know…. those photos that teens and young adults take of themselves with their arm outstretched, camera-phone pointed at their own face….
I was wrong. The following is just a “scratch the surface” conceptual introduction to the concept of Twitter and hashtagging.
With a limit of 145 characters on Twitter, you get a pretty succinct idea regarding your level of interest in a given article posted there. There is no superfluous language or embellishment. It cuts straight to the point. The spartan limitation is refreshing in a society that has a tendency to go on and on and on about things. Not on Twitter. You can’t ramble on Twitter.
Twitter is an incredibly powerful news feed, social feed and professional growth feed. And the driving force behind it all is the system of “hashtags”. You’ve seen hashtags around the net…. they’re those words or phrases preceded by the #. I’m not going to tackle all the geek-speak around hashtags; let’s just cut to the chase of what do they do. THEY MAKE TWITTER SEARCHABLE. Sometimes the hashtag is a tongue-in-cheek- remark about what was posted – take for example #firstworldproblems – but go ahead and put that hastag into a search on Twitter (with the #) – you might be surprised at the enlightenment you walk away with. Teams, agencies, current events all have hashtags in 2013.
I really found the power of twitter during the 2013 flooding in Calgary. All the news agencies were releasing information to twitter, as was the Mayor, the Police and the City of Calgary. To be completely on top of what was happening, I only had to key in #abflood (That was the hashtag assigned to that news event. There were other hastags, but that was the main one) to my twitter account, and all the information was there – faster than on TV; faster than on Google. With pictures, videos and articles embedded.
I saw on Facebook that the Chicago Blackhawks had won the Stanley Cup. I wasn’t sure if that was accurate or not. My first instinct was to Google it. But with only approximately 23 seconds having passed from the time of the win, and the time of my search, no one had had time to write and article, or compose a blog post on the subject. So, I went to Twitter. I figured there were probably a few things I could search. I started with #StanleyCup and voila! Confirmation of the Blackhawks’ win! Equally effective, I’m sure, would have been to search “Blackhawks” or “Bruins” or some other variation of this. Basically, there was no way I could be wrong!!
If you are a business on Twitter…. set up your hastags and use them! Every time you post, tag it. Include your hastag on your business promotions. I will have to choose a hastag for Baragar Productions – to tag everything #BaragarProductions is perhaps not so great… it eats up 19 of my 145 characters! Then again, to be completely searchable… it’s probably worth it. In my teaching career, as we move to using Twitter more and more this coming school year, we will be tagging everything with #CMJHS – is it possible that someone else might also use that tag for something else? Sure it is. It’s not foolproof.
Here’s an example of how it is not foolproof. The Toronto Blue Jays this year are using the hastag #lovethisteam and are asking that when fans tweet about the Blue Jays they tag with that. The other day, I went to check the score in the game, and a girl had put up a tweet referencing something totally different – presumably a team she plays for – and she had tagged her tweet with #lovethisteam – I had to read her “news” two or three times to realize she was talking about something totally unrelated to the Toronto Blue Jays.
Do I really care about the opinion of everyone out there on Twitter? No way. It’s like anything on the Internet… you have to pick and choose. You have to discern. Anything you tweet can be seen by anyone. Who you choose to follow in your feed is worth selecting carefully. My feed has a lot of Educators and Technology people in it. I use Facebook for socializing, and I use Twitter for my career and professional growth. Each day, there are hundreds of excellent articles posted on my Twitter feed – all of which I would love to read and absorb. I will never be able to “keep up” – but Twitter has most certainly brought new life into my career, just for existing.