What Is the Point of: #Hashtags?

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I'm sure a few folks who are new to twitter don't understand what are #hashtags so please don't respond if you know what they are. If you have anything to comment about on this blog post then please jump right in.

 

Also this blog post will give you the history about how this term came to be known.

 

Quote:

 

Whenever a new Web trend comes along, there are people who ask, "What is the point of this?" If millions of people are using something, there has to be a reason. In our What Is the Point of... series, we'll explain it to you.

 

This week, we're asking, What is the point of #hashtags?

 

What Is a Hashtag?

 

The hashtag was invented as a label for groups and topics in IRC chat. By adding the '#' sign before a string of text, users made that string easy to find in a search. But the hashtag went mainstream thanks to Twitter.

 

In 2007, as Twitter was just picking up steam, Chris Messina - an open-source software champion currently at Google - tweeted what is believed to be the original proposal that Twitter users adopt hashtags as well.

 

It caught on. For a long time, it was just a hack; hashtags were simply plain text in a tweet that could show up easily in search. Twitter's early-adopter crowd used.... Continued at: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives...f-hashtags.php