Hashtags and Tracking Social Media

I have never used Twitter before this class, and even now I do not use it much. I really do not know much about the website, including Hashtags. Therefore, I do not have a favorite tag, I do not know how to go about replying to this blog. So here goes my best shot:

I like when I see a Hashtag come up on someone's tweet because it makes it easy for me to see what they are talking about. The human eye goes to the strange or something that stands out from the surroundings. The surroundings in this case is text. Letters, words, text. The pound sign used in Hashtags are something different from the surroundings, it is strange. Therefore, the eye goes straight to the Hashtag.

Hashtags are good to focus the attention of distracted Tweeters. That is pretty much all I have to say about Hashtags. Again, I do not know anything about this stuff and I am completely guessing at my reply here. If you would really like to see what I think about Twitter, check out my blog on Tumblr: http://seeke4.tumblr.com/

I personally love the hashtag phenomenon. It is one of my favorite things about Twitter and adding in my tweets. I think it is an excellent way to see who else out there is thinking about the same things you are. Many favorite way to use hashtags is to search one about a hugh event or topic that is going on and being able to read many people's opinions and facts about it. They work so well for sports games. I can search hashtag Tigers and get the latest scoop on the game if I'm not in front of a T.V. Hashtags really go connect people from all over without having to formally communicate with strangers.

Hashtags are one of my favorite things about twitter. They help organize and make it easier to find things. Using a hashtag is basically like co-signing something. They are very beneficial if you run a business or are trying to get more exposure for your brand. Hashtags allow you to see what people are saying about your products. They are a quick and easy way to increase brand awareness. The challenge is getting people to use your hashtag, if you can find a way to make it funny then it will be much easier to get people to use it. I only pay attention to the funny hashtags, I don't use it that often for groups or events . I haven't been on twitter for that long but my favorite hashtag so far is #ThingsTougherThanRayJ. They can also help you be more visible on twitter, I love reading funny tweets and if someone comes up with something really funny I will want to follow them. As great as they are too much of a good thing is always bad. And I can't stand it when people overuse hashtags or just have unnecessary hashtags. Every word in a tweet shouldn't be a hashtag, its really annoying. I have read some tweets that are full of hashtags but they are funny so I don't mind. However as a general rule it should only be one hashtags per tweet.

My favorite Hashtag might just be "#whitegirlproblems." It's a pretty hilarious topic and even inspired a song on my guy Hoodie Allen's most recent project, Leap Year (youtube: click here for the song, #whitegirlproblems). I think Hashtags are great because in addition to facilitating group conversation on Twitter (in my opinion, something that has differentiated Twitter from Facebook for a very long time and one of the reasons I saw my social network usage slip in favor of Twitter) they can "organize" conversation—in other words, you can search for a given hashtag and see what people are saying about it. From a marketers perspective, being able to "track conversation," especially around an event, brand, product, etc. can be an incredibly valuable tool they have at their disposal. 

I'm still new to Twitter.  In my limited experience, I think that the hashtag turns twitter into a search engine with it's own unique language.  During the NFL lockout this summer, I used "#NFLlockout" to follow breaking news and fan discussions.  The hashtag makes it possible to participate in real-time discussions without having to follow or be followed by the Twitter universe.  The hashtag makes it possible to search for topics without seaking out individuals to discuss these topics.  Companies are latching onto the hashtag as a way to create virtual discussion groups without making it mandatory to "like" or "friend" the brand or company.  Using a hashtag on Twitter is the equivalent of setting up a user group for a relevant discussion.  These discussions could run for months or dissapate in hours.  

I haven't been an avid Twitter user until taking this class. And, I have to admit, I'm still in the beginner phase. Until I learned how companies can track hashtag usage, I mostly thought of them as fun little phrases that bring together Twitter users who have similar interests. Being able to track, monitor, and report on hashtag use as it relates to a company's product or brand is a powerful tool because it allows for real-time feedback. Hashtag tracking can also be integrated with traditional media in many instances: for example, determining the success of an ad campaign by evaluating the amount of conversation generated on social media.

Favorite personal hashtag? After yesterday's game, it has to be #GoGreen!

I personally do not really use Hashtags that much. But it is fun, and it creates links between different people in a more fun way. I guess good hashtags can also promote a person's chances of being acknowledged more in the online environment. I agree with Jiaxun Yu that since Twitter has been developing the top ten hashtags on a daily basis, it will eventually become a powerful tool not only for companies to do brand monitoring, but it might also become a tool for social movement some day, since it depends totally on short but powerful and witty content. 

Personally, I've never used Twitter until taking this course. I am not quite sure about Twitter terms yet, and I heard "Hashtag" just reading after this post. Very interesting feature, that I just found is if you simply a way for people to search for tweets that have a common topic. For example, if you search on #LOST (or #Lost, or #lost, because it's not case-sensitive), you'll get a list of tweets related to the TV show. What you won't get are tweets that say "I lost my wallet yesterday" because "lost" isn't preceded by the hash tag. Wow.. I think really fantastic function of nowadays. Also, after searching about hashtag, I found a hashtag fits to me. It's #mylifeisaverage. Following this hashtag, one of its users says "Today, I was reading 60 ways to get kicked out of wal-mart. Number 41 was to make a pillow fort. I know what I'm doing today."

I think hashtag is a very nice tool to help people to find more things about this topic. In my opinion, hashtad is like keyword function in the twitter. I don't have any hashtag, but I always use hashtag to find more interesting things about that topic. Also I can use hashtag to know and make more new friends on the twitter. Although sometimes hashtag gives to much more tweets to find what I really want, I still think it is a good way to communication with others who is interested in the same topic. By the way, I think a hot topic in this weekend is #GoGreen and #Spartan!

Although I've had my Twitter account for over two years, I do not use it very actively. I've never repeated a #hashtag within my total of 16 tweets, so I do not have a favorite. I do like using hastags though. I use them to summarize my feelings about my previous sentence. An example is, "In a line wrapped around the building to get "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" signed by author Jonathon Safran Foer. #worthit". Although groups get created for everyone who uses the same hashtag, I do not think people use it to communicate with each other. Once I make hashtag I usually click on it after and read what others had to say. I look for about a minute and then move onto other things. I feel that groups are beneficial for classes and big events though. It creates a community where similar people can interact and ask questions, or celebrate a big win (#GoGreen)!

I didn't use twitter until this class. So Hashtag is one of the difficult things to me. However, I do think this is a really nice function to categorize information and to search the ideas you are interested. It's like a google inside twitter, how amazing! And those top Hashtags are so interesting though I never think of using most of them...Since today is such a BIG DAY, of course, my favorite Hashtag is #GoGreen, #GoWhite!!

Hashtags is relatively a new thing to me since I just came to use tweet last year. In China, we use hashtags simply only for some celebrities’ names or big events’ titles or some important information like “#free#” in the Chinese version of tweet lately. It is innovative to use hastags like this, which is amusing, and very web-language catered. I think this can be a useful channel for PR workers to get ideas from the mass audience about what is cared about at the time or what is important for their products or brands to be improved for appealing to customers.

When I first saw hashtags, I did not understand them.  Once I joined twitter about a year ago, I still found them a little odd.  The more I saw them, the more I got used to them, and eventually ended up using them.  I think they are a great way to create topics, and see what other people are saying about the same thing.  I also think that they can be comical and amusing.  I personally find hashtags as one of my favorite parts about twitter.  I think it is a new and innovative way to emphasize something that you are trying to say.  

In my opinion, hashtags are a fun way to insert witty statements to the end of a tweet. I know sometimes when I tweet at people at work, we use random hashtags at the end of our tweets to either make a joke or sum up our tweet. I do see the purpose of these Twitter groups more in the professional setting. For example, at work we follow the hashtag #eventprofs to connect with other event professionals around the world. The people who contribute to the group post articles or questions that they need answering. They also have a weekly chat where they start a topic and people join in under the hashtag. If hashtags are also being indexed on Google, if companies used their keywords as hash tags, they could easily improve their SEO. Hashtags are not just for funny conversations anymore.

To be completley honest, I had no idea what a hashtag was until fairly recently.  Even when I established my own twitter account, the hashtag was the most difficult thing for me to wrap my head around.

Chris Messina was a brilliant businessman.  Hashtags provide great support in marketing research related to how consumers are conversing about your product, service, or company.  Twitter already makes it easy to track mentions of your company...the hashtag allows for a gathering of consumer comments.  It is a marketing researcher's dream come true.  Way to go, Chris Messina, and thank you. 

By default, I suppose #NMDL is my favorite... unfortunatley, so far it is the only one I have used.  The more research that I do, the more I will branch out - if only there were more hours in the day! 

Personally, hashtag brings us at least two benefits. First, it provides topics for corporate twitter acounts to tweet. Twitter will list trends which include 10 popular hashtag keywords. Public interests and attitudes could be learnt from those words. Corporations could tweet something relevant to both the brand itself and the hot topic. And people can change location to see trends in other parts of the world, which helps local companies to interact with their followers. Besides, using hashtag will help measure the effectiveness of an online event. How could we know the popularity of an topic or event online? It's not through mentioning twitter accounts who hold the event, but by using hashtag. So we could measure the participation of an event by seeing how many people using the hashtag, and how they make comments.

Hashtags are a great way to categorize tweets. TV shows are now displaying hashtags that they want viewers to use when they are tweeting about the show while they are watching. For example during episodes of the show Workaholics on Comedy Central there is a hashtag displayed on the bottom left corner of the screen. It's a very smart move by Comedy Central because so many people watch TV and use their laptops at the same time. It also makes watching TV more fun because if you're watching a show and your friends are watching the same show in other places you can still talk to each other about that show using hashtags.

I like HashTags. I think that for non-twitter users, HashTags are one of the first things that they associate with Twitter. I was interested to hear how the first HashTag was used but I would also like to know more about how HashTags developed and became what they are today. I do not have a favorite HashTag because I feel as though HashTags change depending on the context of the tweet. 

I like hashtags. I think it is a cool way for people to communicate with eachother that share something in common. It is fun to search different hashtags on twitter and see what tweets come up. Sometimes I think people take the hashtags too far when they are a sentence long.  Hashtags should try to stay short and sweet, to the point. Sometimes it is hard to decide what to use as a hashtag. #toughdecisions