The Fit and Function of the Hashtag

FIT AND FUNCTION of the #HASHTAG A "hashtag" is a word or a phrase prefixed with the symbol "#". It is a form of metadata tag and is used to illustrate short messages on microblogging and social networking sites such as Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook and many others. Hashtags are used to group or categorize posts. One can search for something specific using the hashtag and get the set of messages that contain that topic. %23 Me #interiordesign D Update Status O Add Photos/Video Results for #interiordesign MLB MajorleagueBaseball #Baseball Top / All / People you follow K 63 Interior Design @Interior_Design 2 9 O e A Only Me v Post RS Thomas Lavin at his showroom reception with designer Peggy Platner and Edie Cohen. pic.twitter.com/8YUYSUZJAX O View photo Before Hashtags became the epitome of today's pop culture, thanks to Twitter, they were used within "IRC" (Internet Relay Chat) networks, to label groups and topics. They were also commonly used to mark indi- vidual messages as relevant to a particular group, and to mark individual messages as belonging to a partic- ular topic or "channel". bopics bop brending A WinJab - [email protected] WinJab Agents Presence Roster Help Status: ONLINE Messenger Status Group # .oreilly.com #Tigerblood 464,383 Mentions After what many view as a "breakdown of epic proportions" during an interview in early 201i, Charlie Sheen propelled several substance-fueled phrases into Internet legend, including this one. %% Please Wait while IRC-Transport connects to the server and/or joins the channel... %% DexJabber Has Joined Channel # DexJabber edd raelConf russell %9% %% DexJabber Is in Channel # %% edd Is in Channel # %% raelConf Is in Channel # %% russell Is in Channel # russell? yes, DexJabber? Just checking :) #Thankyouleechongwei 500,000 Mentions Lee Chong Wei, a Malaysian badminton player, competed during the 2012 Olympics he was literally the country's only hope for a gold metal. %23 23 #Adele, #5kyfall 781,117 Mentions During the 2013 Oscars, Adele won an award for singing a song so beautiful, James Bond himself (Daniel Craig) became overuhelmed with emotion and broke down and cried. The first use of the term "hashtag" was in a blog post by Stowe Boyd, "Hash Tags = Twitter Groupings," on 26 August 2007, and beginning July 1, 2009, Twitter began to hyperlink all hashtags in Tweets to Twitter search results for the hashtagged word. In 2010, Twitter introduced "Trending Topics" on Twitter's front page, displaying hashtags that were of rapidly-growing popularity. %2: #FF CFollow Friday) FollowFriday shows what happens when the Twitter coMmunity is asked a direct question: "Who do you think your friends should follow?" #= Twitter Groupings %3D #Bahrain But when did this symbol (#) become so 2.8 Million Mentions In 2011, Twitter played a big part of the unrest that occured in the Arab region people involved in the protests directly used Twitter rather sparingly, since only a fraction of their citizens even use the service, the global spread of news and information using Twitter is likely to never be equalled again. widely known as the "hash" tag? Outside of North America, the symbol is called hash and the corresponding telephone key is called the hash key. In American and Canadian English, the symbol is usually called the pound sign and the telephone key is called the pound key. -- though the Today, the use of hashtags in social media continues to be an evolving practice, growing in a very similar way to which began. Users continue to explore the different applications of hashtags, and collectively control the future of channel tagging in the social media vortex. The history of the hashtag is an ongoing story about the ways in which product users can influence the application and use of a product with the strength of a collective voice. THIS INFOGRAPHIC IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY Jack SERVABID, AN INNOVATIVE AND in the box MAKEITPLATINUM MARRYBACON.COM #marrybacon FUN WAY TO GET THINGS DONE WELCOME TO OUR TURF HOTV WHomeAdvantage NOW ON ITUNES O #loveheme Tide We get out blood, too. #sharkweek 0000