Hash Tags for Twitter ###

Adding Hashtags to create a Tweet topic...

A stream  of incoming tweets is typically a real mishmash of people, personalities, and topcs, and that is the Fun and excitement of Twitter.  

Then all of a sudden people are all talking about a on going event like a TV show.  Movie  or New Years.  If you are seeing alot of tweets on  a subject from your friends,  Then it is a hot topc.  That means there will be lots of great information on that subject in Twittersphere.  So how can you get your hands on that info?

You could use Twitter search engine Or you could use a easier method:  Hashtags.  A hashtag is a keyword  ( preceded by the hash symbol # hence the name)  associated with a particular subject,  and tweeters include the hashtag in any tweet on that subject.

Here is how to perform a hashtag search using the Advanced Serch page:

1. go to  http://search.twitter.com/advanced
2. find the box that says  This hashtag,   type the hashtag topic you want to find.  Do not add the hash(#)  in front of the topic word;  Twitter adds it for you.
3. Click search.  You will see a list of tweets that include the hashtag.

Now you can find out what everyone is saying on that subject.

 For example, if you search on #Survivor  you'll get a list of tweets related to the TV show. What you won't get are tweets that say "I am a  survivor of world war one.  Or I love that song I am a Survivor.  Because these are not  preceded by the hash tag.

In a way, hash tags allow you to create communities of people interested in the same topic by making it easier for them to find and share info related to it.

You can make your own Hash tag for a subject.   For example, when the plane went down in the Hudson River , some Twitter user wrote a post and added #flight1549 to it. I have no idea who this person was, but somebody else would have read it and when he posted something about the incident, added #flight1549 to HIS tweet. For something like this, where tweets would have been flying fast and furiously, it wouldn't have taken long for this hash tag to go viral and suddenly thousands of people posting about it would have added it to their tweets as well. Then, if you wanted info on the situation, you could do a search on "#flight1549" and see everything that people had written about it.

Note: Before you create your own tag, you might want to search on a few variations to make sure they don't already exist. I looked for #basketweaving, #basket, and #weaving, and they either didn't exist or didn't apply to this topic.

Since the tag will use up some of my 140-character limit, I want to keep it fairly short, while still making it precise. For example, #basket might make some people think of basketball instead of basket weaving. So I could create a tag called #basketweave that isn't too long, but is clear what it's about.

To make this hash tag "live", all I need to do is write a tweet and add #basketweave to it. It can be anywhere in the tweet, not just at the end. And I would probably announce that I was creating it to alert my followers. For example:

Fellow basket weavers. Let's share tips and tricks by adding #basketweave to our tweets.

Now, I'm not going to do that, because I'm not actually interested in basket weaving. (No offense to any weavers out there.) However, I have just created a new hash tag called #tech4ludds for any tweets that people want to associate with Tech for Luddites. I did it by posting this:

Starting a new hash tag for Tech for Luddites. Got a question for me or a great tech tip to share? Add this to your tweet. #tech4ludds

This way, I'm letting my followers know that this now exists, so they can add the hash tag to their own tweets if they think it's related to this blog somehow.

(I actually wanted to create a tag for t4l for brevity but there was already one tweet in existence using that tag, if you can believe it! It's in Dutch and has a link to the Netherlands Unicef site. A Google search leads me to believe it stands for Time for Learning. Probably a great program but still... Bummer.)

Now, if I search on #tech4ludds, I'll only find that first tweet I wrote. Fingers crossed it doesn't stay that way!

I hope the above clarifies the Twitter hash tag, which I know can be very confusing to new Twitterers. If you still have questions about it, please send me an e-mail atF1@TechForLuddites.com  part of this article was written by  this was from  http://www.techforluddites.com/  Twitter hash tags what is it and how do yo use it.  

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