Twitter Hashtags and Groups « American Pai
“As your list of friends grows on Twitter, the amount of messages that scroll across your screen increases exponentially. Pretty soon it becomes impossible to catch messages directed your way in real-time. Ultimately you have to resort to backtracking or using a search tool like TweetScan (R.I.P Terraminds!). Increasingly members of the Twitter community are demanding better ways to filter and group all of this information. One of the new solutions has been Twitter Hashtags and channels.”
Yes, Twitter Hashtags are becoming more widely adopted. I have used them more often, especially for tweets regarding Austin, where I vacationed. Hashtags is a site that tracks the use of the # symbol in Twitter posts. It’s really that simple but that one act provides a wonderful opportunity. That’s the opportunity to follow all of the posts about a specific # tag.
In my case, I tagged posts with #Austin where I provided links to pictures and blog posts, even people. At the outset one might think there is little extra value here so far. Hashtags turns that into tweets that users can subscribe to.
Now a user can go beyond following real life friends without having to add lots of strangers on Twitter. Hashtag will send those tweets with the # tag, say #Austin, right to your door Twitter box.
So this sounds great right? There are downsides though.
1) # tags interrupt the conversation – yes, as they are still new, when used, followers may inquire about their use and the conversation strays; the tags also interrupt literally by breaking up the flow of words and letters. Several of my followers have actually complained to me.
2) #tags are seen as link bait – because the tags intended purpose is to allow Twitter messages to be found by engines such as Hashtags, your Twitter buddies might feel put off that your post is more to draw attention to you and your links than be real conversation. This is a valid concern in my opinion. I’ve already seen that use where no attempt is made to engage others. Those tweets stand out often by a lack of any other text in the message.
3) #tags waste space – and there’s a shortage of that built right into Twitter. This is probably the most reasonable argument against their use. Paisano and others agree that it’s time for Twitter to bring on tagging outside the message.
I’ll keep using # tags for now, but only where it really serves a purpose. Already evident is the use of the # even when the post has no intrinsic value about the tagged word.
What will you do? Use them? Abuse them? Ignore them? Drop your friends that use them? What will come next? Are you working on the next best thing for Twitter?
Similar Posts:
- RT @google: Tweets and updates and search, oh my!
- Twitter for Real Estate Agents
- So, What Do You Use To Twitter?
- Daily Quote via Dashes
- Twitter – Blocking Followers
Tags: hashtags, Paisano, Social Networking, Twitter
