"Hashtags" are a simple way to make things you are writing (or photographing, or video-ing) more findable on the web. There's no science to hashtags, they are simply keywords that one adds to a blog post or Twitter tweet (or photo, etc.) to make it more findable later.
Here is a quick primer on hashtags from Amy Gahran. (And the patron of all all this organic tagging stuff, which is often called a "folksonomy," is Thomas Vander Wal, who you should be following if you're not.)
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What was so interesting is that nine of the top ten searches currently trending on http://search.twitter.com are for hashtags, instead of "natural" words. In fact, the only "natural" search right now is for "iPhone."
So What?
No big rocket science here, but an interesting bit for sure. Individuals are starting to organically "tag" the things they are creating on the web so that others can find it. And, apparently, people are starting to search on these tags in greater numbers, at least according to the trend that we're seeing right now.
If you are representing an organization…are you tagging things so that your customers can find them?
If you are running a conference…do you have an "agreed upon" hashtag that all who are chronicling it are using, so that those in the room (and on the web) can find all of the great things that are being created there?
If you are an individual…are you tagging your support issues with vendors that you are publicly documenting (you are doing that, right?) with tags so that vendors can find YOU, instead of you going to them?
>>do you have an “agreed upon” hashtag that all who are chronicling it are using, so that those in the room (and on the web) can find all of the great things that are being created there?
Snort! So the folksonomy becomes a controlled vocabulary, the very thing it was created to rally against? All things go in cycles, I suppose.
And don’t try to tell me there’s no “science” to hashtags and then turn around and tell conference organizers to create an authorized hashtag. There’s a science for exactly that: it’s called “information science.”
>Snort! So the folksonomy becomes a controlled vocabulary, the very thing it was created to rally against? All things go in cycles, I suppose.
perhaps i overstated. what i was implying was that there’s no centralized authority administering hashtags, and that anyone can say “hey…let’s use this one!” additionally, i wanted to highlight the fact that there could be, for example, “a” hashtag for the conference that could make it easier for folks to find each other. or not. there’s no compulsory reason to do so, other than ease-of-finding later.
>And don’t try to tell me there’s no “science” to hashtags and then turn around and tell conference organizers to create an authorized hashtag. There’s a science for exactly that: it’s called “information science.”
ok. allow me to rephrase…”you don’t need to study any science (including information science) to start using a hashtag. just start using one.”
that said, i am certain information science has much to offer in how one can more effectively/productively use them.
>…”you don’t need to study any science (including information science) to start using a hashtag. just start using one.”
You may not need it to *apply* a hashtag. You may need it to find what you are looking for later. That’s my point. In this day and age, no one wants to have to run multiple searches for #socialcustomermanifesto, #scm, #soccust, etc. Rather than having an “agreed upon” tag for your organization, why not try to find a way to aggregate all the various user-created tags, so that searching one pulls up the results for all?
Tim Spalding and the LibraryThing crew are taking a nice step in the right direction with what they call “tag aliases.” It creates a balance between natural langauge user-applied tags and the “one true tag” from sort of centrailized administration.
cool! is there an, um…tag alias to where i could find the LibraryThing stuff? 🙂
Is it enough to agree upon one tag? Those not party to the agreement are kind of left out of that deal. Ime, a generally workable set of tags is likely to emerge from a short back&forth among a pretty small number of people. (Info science questions: How many is a ‘pretty small number’ and what does the back&forth look like?) My hunch is based on experience with small volunteer focus groups, but it’s sure been consistent. Useful consensus emerges quickly, it seems. But in the absence of some kind of effort to agree, I wonder if the tagging is too random to deal with minor complexities like simple spelling quirks. And yes, accumulating cross-references seems like one good way of coaxing something like consensus to emerge.
PS: And then people decide to get clever with their tags because basic description is, well, boring, and all hell breaks loose.
You can look at any tag on LibraryThing. For example, the top tag is fiction, and you can see all the aliases for that tag.
Any user can combine tags, and there are community recommendations but no centralized authority controls the action or is responsible for implementing or maintaining the aliases.