On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 12:29 AM, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > I am on the Twitter, but have never really used it much, and do not really > understand it that well, especially those "hashtags". Occasionally I will > go on there to see what some of the people I "follow" are saying from time > to time. Today I happened upon the > *#**RomneyShambles*<https://twitter.com/#%21/search/%23RomneyShambles>hashtag > while checking on something else, and was impressed with how > consistently funny many of the posts were (so many of the posts I have seen > on other trendy hashtags are just stupid). > > Anyway, all of that prompts this: Where do these hashtags come from? Is > there some central person at the Twitter who sets them up, or are they some > kind of emergent property of the stream? If the latter, shouldn't we see a > lot of failed variations - tags that people tried to start but did not > attract a critical mass? >
Hashtags can be made by anyone. All you have to do when tweeting something is to type a "#" before a word. And yeah, there are plenty that go absolutely nowhere, like a lonely kid shouting into a windstorm. Twitter has an algorithm that tries to pull out new and popular ones for the trending topic list. (Which also sees if unhashed phrases are being used over and over, too.) Now, that #Hashtags have become a thing, groups and companies usually not associated with Twitter (exception to be noted shortly), will try to hype a particular hashtag to get traction -- maybe through TV ads or a bug, or through a Tweet on their official twitter account. They do this as to try to not have tweets about their show/movie/product fragmented. (So tweets about "How I Met Your Mother" is encouraged to be tagged #HIMYM, rather that #HowIMetYourMother -- also, the former is shorter.) The exception to the "not associated with Twitter" bit is the promoted topic feature of Twitter. Companies can pay to have Twitter promote a #Hashtag or a phrase in its Trending Topics, too... so it is mostly user generated, but with some bits of nudging by companies or important people. -- Wesley McGee http://www.ambivi.com http://sterlingnorth.vox.com http://drawing-a-blank.tumblr.com Twitter: @westwit G+: http://plus.google.com/113413697748381364954 Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/wesleymcgee -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
