The Question of Hashtags
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009Whether you’ve been on Twitter since 2006 or your name is Oprah, you may have seen this thing called a hashtag on people’s posts. Hashtags are those little phrases in a post preceded by a #. Many things have been hastagged from Shaq’s diet (#shaqlyte) to your favorite TV show (#24, #idol, #lost) to the Conservative movement on Twitter (#tcot). But none of these help answer the question, why use hashtags?
The answer used to be simple: hashtags make it easier to search twitter for topics. Now however, Search.Twitter.com is so effective that results can not only be found by keyword, but by proximity to a certain location, by attitude, by date, or even by person. With this level of scale, the search function of hash-tag has been severely diminished.
But hashtags still have a relevant place in the Twitter community for three reasons:
- Focus- Having and promoting a single hashtag for your company, event, or meme allows other Twitterers to focus on one thing when talking. By fashioning the conversation around one specific point, everyone can easily focus on your message and not just your name.
- Community- Hashtags create communities. #Followfriday (one of the most popular recurring Twitter memes) would mean nothing if it was a group of random people telling everyone who they should follow. And no one would like that.
- Visibility- Hashtags are a great way to make a subject more visible through searches and updates. It’s like trying to start the wave at a big game. If one or two people across the stadium try, there is no noticeable effect. But when a larger group of fans jump out of their seats at the same time, everyone better be ready to scream.
What are other reasons to use hashtags? What are some of the ones you use?
