The hash
in hashtag
refers to this character:
#. Everyone knows it is an
octothorpe, but some people call it an hash. Other common names are square, tic-tac-toe
and crunch.
Its official Unicode
name is the boring Number Sign, and it is usually pronounced as
number
. In case you were wondering, the № character is pronounced as numero
and its
Unicode name is Numero Sign.
C♯ programmers tend to confuse # with ♯. The ♯ character is a musical
symbol. Its Unicode name is Music Sharp Sign and it is usually pronounced as sharp
.
Their confusion makes C♯ programmers the largest group of programmers that do not even know how to spell the name of the programming language they use, but you should probably not make any #joke about that.
Many Americans call # a pound sign
. That is incorrect, and they know it, but
perhaps they are out to create deliberate confusion
with £, the actual Pound Sign, as that happens to be monetary unit of the
British, for whom they threw a tea party in Boston Harbour.
So, hashtags should really be called numtags, but hashtags is that name that stuck already.
A hashtag is a inline tag; a tag that is not added added onto some text, but a tag That’s inside the text it tags. Hashtags are distinguished from the rest of the text by the Number Sign (hash) in front of it.
The use of hashtags on Twitter started with a tweet by @factoryjoe (Chris Messina):
2007-08-23 19:25 factoryjoe How do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?
During the San Diego forest fires of 2007, @nateritter kept using the hashtag #sandiegofire, and Chris Messina did a blog post on that.
From there on, hashtags became more and more popular. They are an essential part of the Twitter culture now.
Hashtags are supported by Twitter Search. You can choose to search for any word (and that would get matching hashtags as well), or just for hashtags.
Hashtag are generally used to tag tweets about a certain subject or event. For example, you can use #twitter to tag tweets about twitter, and #dog to tags tweets about dogs.
When something happens, people will spontaneously start using hashtags for the place name, or the nature of the event. When a plane crashes, you are likely to see hashtags for the place, the airline as well as #crash or #planecrash. If you want follow all the tagged tweets, you will have to look for all of these - and combinations; when a plane crashed on the Hudson, tweeple started using #hudson, #crash and soon, #hudsoncrash.
When there is big planned event, such as major conference or trade show, people attending will often agree beforehand on a hashtag to use for event coverage. If you follow others planning to attend you will probably know what tag to use before you get there. Otherwise, just ask around, watch the tweet stream or search for other messages about the event to pick on the tag.
Tags are also associated with groups. One the Twitter Groups site, every group is identified by its own, unique hashtag. For each group, the site shows tweets that have been tagged with the group’s chosen tag.
Usage of hashtags is voluntary, and there is no penalty whatsoever for forgetting to use one. There is only the obvious penalty for misspelling a hashtag; a search for the right hashtag will not find tweets with a misspelled variation of it.
There is no set limit to the number of hashtags you can use in a tweet. There is just the character limit for the tweet.
Hashtags do have an obvious built-in penalty; using a hashtag takes away from your already limited character budget. The advantage is that your message will seen by people looking for the hashtag, even if they do not follow you.
You can place hashtags wherever you like, but you shouldn’t place them willy-nilly or make up your own rules. Some twittiquete has evolved about how to do it right. There are three possibilities; at the end, up front, and embedded, and these are not created equal.
Newbies tend to think it is best to add hashtag at the end of a tweet. At
first it may be because they did not think of adding the tag until they had
already typed the message. Later, they may rationalise that this way, the tweet
remains normal text up to the tag - but it makes for a jarring
reading experience to read a tweet and then suddenly encounter a bunch of hashtags at the end.
Reading messages with the hashtags at the start feels more natural; you can
quickly scan and skip the tags, and then read a normal message.
There are more reasons why experienced users tend to put any hashtags they use at the front of their tweets. By making it a habit to put the hashtag first, they are less likely to forget it, and less likely to write a sentence that doesn’t leave any room for a hashtag. Putting the hashtag up-front also immediately tells the reader what the message is about, and thus makes it easier for followers to quickly scan through messages for messages of interest.
This is very much like email: subject first, content second. You would not like it much if it were the other way round.
A third option is to use hashtags in the middle of a tweet, by writing a
normal sentence and then tagging a few words, e.g. This #runaway #cat does not drink milk
.
The obvious advantage of this technique is that it takes only one character, but it
makes for the most jarring reading experience of all. You should avoid this
technique. Write #runaway #cat This cat does not drink milk
instead.
It is true that Chris Messina initially promoted embedded hashtags as a way to save space, but also that he later came round to say you shouldn’t be doing that (2007-12-23).
You should really avoid embedded hashtags for a much more practical and
mundane reason; an embedded hashtag is
generally understood as a message about the hashtag, rather than a message
tagged with it. For example: #hashtag @Newbie The #followfriday you are seeing
is a hashtag. Look at hashtag.org
. Hashtags searches are likely to become
smarter and allow filtering of hashtags based on their position, and to default
to showing up-front hashtags only.
Such smarter filtering will also get rid of many false positives that infest
the results of current hashtag filters, such as What is your #?
or She is #1 in the list
.
You should put hashtag first. You should put retweet acknowledgements first. So, what do you do when you have to include both? The software that processes tweets does not care whether you put retweet acknowledgement or hashtags first.
It is easiest to copy and paste a message and
then put the retweet acknowledgement in front, like this: RT @CatLover #runaway #cat This cat does not drink milk
.
However, humans prefer having all the tags first like this: #runaway #cat RT @CatLover This cat does not drink milk
.
Put the most important info first. It is more important to know what your message is about than that you retweeted it; don’t make your followers read that you retweeted a message when they don’t even care about the subject. Tell them the subject first, and only then tell them it is retweet.
Everyone can create a hashtag at the spur of the moment. Some, like those for groups or events are widely known, others are incidental or just a joke. There is no way for you to know them all, but there are several hashtag directories that track hashtags, their usage and meanings.
The hashtags.org web site shows tweets organised by hashtag. The hashtags.org site tries to track all hashtags used by all twitterers, but you can make sure your hashtags show up by following @hashtags; it follows you back to tracks all the hashtags you use in your tweetstream.
Various Twitter guides still say that you must follow hashtags, but that advice is out of date. Hashtags are being tracked in many different ways. The real reason to follow @hashtags is to keep up to date on new hashtags.org developments - and to err on the safe side, of course.
What the Hashtag?! is a user-editable encyclopaedia [directory] for hashtags
.
You can look up and edit hashtags. The What the Hashtag?! site offers a Firefox search bar and
GreaseMonkey script to search their hashtag directory.
HashDictionary and tagal.us are yet two others.
Tags are being use to track trends. As tweeple tag their tweets, applications count the hashtags, and then highlight which tags are popular.
The tagal.us and hashdictionary sites are gone.
Copyright © Tamura Jones. All Rights reserved.