Hash Tag

[murraymints]

What does this mean...I hear it everywhere but have not a clue !

[woofgang]

http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Technology/Computers/Question1272021.html#answer-8307507

[murraymints]

Still no wiser ..can someone please explain what does it mean...

[mccfluff]

in general or specific to twitter

if you use twitter putting a # in front of something makes ita tracked subject so you can then use it to find people who are all talking about the same thing

you could search for #murrymints and if i had tweeted something #murraymints you would find it

and if i divert my phone at work, to undivert it i do #81 :-)

[murraymints]

I still do n ot understand its use in spoken form

[jno]

the # key is called the hash key (possibly because it looks a bit like an H: hache is French for H, I think). A tag is like a caption you put on an electronic file, such as a photo.

[jomifl]

Murrymints, you have my sympathy, I have read the links and the links to the links but am also no wiser. If it is twitter specific then as far as I'm concerned it is an irrelevance as I cannot see how the thoughts of a celebrity or sportsperson could be of any interest to me. Surely it is usually 2nd hand gossip several times removed.

[jno]

moderately useful in various ways... some people are indeed interested in what celebrities and sportspeople have to say; others are interested in what Stephen Fry or their mother has to say. This is a quick way of finding out. It's actually attached to the subject matter rather than the tweeter. So it can give you a very very rough guide to what people are talking about most

http://whatthetrend.com/

[jomifl]

jno, emails still work for me:o)

[Barmaid]

#overusedandpretentious# ;)

[Mamyalynne]

Interesting notion on how it began, may well be urban myth but...

"Hashtags believed to have originated on Twitter but, interestingly enough, it is not a Twitter function. Some believe it began when the broken plane luckily landed in the Hudson River in early 2009, 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."

[jno]

emails may work with your mother, but Twitter will probably tell you more quickly what Stephen Fry has on his mind, should you wish to know.

The speed of transmission has helped fuel campaigns and responses - for instance over the Mail and the Millibands; public derision that would once have taken a week to build up now takes an hour. There's scope for debate over whether this is a good thing; but it's here now, and that's what it's used for.

[jno]

and, just to add, of course, news spreads quickly.

[Mamyalynne]

MM , you mention the use of 'Hashtag' in the spoken word - the way I imagine it is that if you are Twitter minded (I am not) this scenario....

Two pals out eating lunch and the waiter trips carrying a laden tray all over a stuffy looking customer - pals look at each other and mouth 'Hashtag'.

In other words something hugely entertaining (yawn) to Tweet about.

[netibiza]

Some people just use it in every day speech. I have been known to chuck in a Hashtag, cos I'm a with it oap, no idea either really.

[Alex_Higham]

And all the time I have been thinking that a Hashtag was was a street corner chappie who sold Cannabis.

[jomifl]

Jno, I have no interest in the internal workings of Stephen Fry's mind and I'm sure that he would have little interest in the workings of mine even if he had heard of me. :o) Is he a friend of yours?