#davissq hashtag

[cos]

If you don't use twitter, feel free to ignore this :)

If you do use twitter, how about we start using #davissq as a hashtag for things in/about Davis Square?

Comments

[ron_newman]

For the benefit of us who don't use twitter but might want to know anyway: Could you please explain what a hashtag is and how to use it?

[lizzielizzie.livejournal.com]

http://twitter.pbworks.com/Hashtags

Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They're like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.

Hashtags were developed as a means to create "groupings" on Twitter, without having to change the basic service.

[ron_newman]

How does it differ from the twitter group that someone else created?

[cos]

tags aren't groups. I don't think that was the best comparison to make. However, people do track tags, and since there's no actual structure on twitter, when you get lots of people using and tracking a particular tag, that has grouplike qualities to it (though with no concept of "membership").

[perich.livejournal.com]

You don't have to be a member of a particular Twitter group to post something with a hash tag, is the difference.

A hashtag (#) is just a flag that makes posts on a given subject easier to find in a search. It's not a hierarchical channel.

[lizzielizzie.livejournal.com]

It means you don't have to be a member of the Tiwtter group (or have a Twitter account, actually) to see the listings. You can go to search.twitter.com and search for #davissq and see what folks are saying.

The Twitter group is for folks who have Twitter accounts and want to communicate with one another regarding certain topics or areas of interest. They are called "twibes".

[cos]

It's something that started as an informal convention to tag twitter posts, kind of like adding tags to LJ posts here. Now there's a fair amount of infrastructure around it. For example, hashtags.org tracks tag trends and gives you graphs (compare http://hashtags.org/tag/music and http://hashtags.org/tag/100days ).

Or, I could be snarky and include this link :)

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

yes, it is the same as using tags on livejournal.

as it happens, you can still search for 'tweets' containing 'davis' or 'davis square' or whatever, and even if they do not have a hashtag, they will come up. the hashtag is helpful to group them all though, and to give a common search term to use, again like with livejournal.

also, sometimes there will be themes on twitter. for instance one day, people were coming up with jokes about what would be 'the next twitter' and making puns about it. each entry for this was tagged with #nexttwitter - so i saw one, and knew to search by that term and then i could read all the jokes from all the users.

[cos]

so i saw one, and knew to search by that term

Yes, the fact that people see a #hashtag and know that it is one, is one of the advantages it has over just using the same name without the #. Another is that twitter searches automatically turn #hashtags into search links, which encourages people who see them to search for other posts with the same tag, something that wouldn't generally occur to someone who sees "Davis Square" in a friend's post.

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

exactly, thank you. (i'm terrible at wording today, and end up just rambling it seems.)

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

and not to mention many people don't even realize twitter has a search function at first. something i still wish they would integrate with the home page.

[ron_newman]

Agreed. A few weeks ago I went to www.twitter.com , couldn't figure out how to search for anything, and ended up asking on LJ (where someone told me about search.twitter.com )

[cos]

There's actually a link to it called "search" in the link bar at the bottom of all twitter.com pages, so if you search for "search" you'll find it :) Lots of people miss it, obviously.

[ron_newman]

That link is t-i-n-y. They should put the search form on their home page.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's like, would you like to see our privacy policy? Or would you like to use one of our core features?

[perich.livejournal.com]

I will start doing this. If enough people adopt it, it'll catch on.

[georgy.livejournal.com]

Relatedly, do you know about the 02144now Twitter account? Whoever maintains it acts as an informal aggregator of posts that mention Davis or Davis establishments. There is also an 02138now account. Maybe the 02144now person would adopt #davissq

[ron_newman]

cos, since you understand Twitter much better than I do, could you edit the davis_square profile appropriately? Right now it has a link "Davis Square Twitter Group" which definitely isn't correct, and may be my fault.

[cos]

Oh, yeah, that's not a group, that's an account. I'll edit.

[ron_newman]

Thanks. Still seems like a search for "davis sq" without the hashtag finds a lot more tweets.

[cos]

That's certainly true because nobody has been using the hashtag, I'm trying to start a new one.

In general, of course, a search is usually going to be a superset to a tag (as long as they share text). However, there's a bunch of extra stuff around hash tags that make them useful in different ways than mere searches (for example, those graphs at hashtags.org). Search terms are also fuzzy and vary, but when people are tracking a hashtag that they all agree on the spelling of, they all see the same thing.

[versonic.livejournal.com]

I'll use it! I don't use many hashtags, so it'll stick out but whatever. Sounds useful to me!

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Seconded! I'll even follow it on my cell phone to get it started!

[antimony.livejournal.com]

Heh, I just added it to my second-ever twit. :)