Hashtags. Those things starting with a pound symbol and followed by a word, or several words. They started out being used to denote channels in Internet relay chat, and were adopted by the users of Twitter in 2007. Hashtags became a handy shortcut to tag and find content.
Hashtags used to aggregate relevant content at RSA Conference.
Photo ©RSA Conference (Flickr)
Their utility continued for years, although they became less critical to finding content. Twitter created “lists” to group users, and more effective search tools. Third-party Twitter clients developed their own search-and-filtering capabilities. Tools such as Storify enabled users to gather and share related tweets on custom timelines.
None the less, hashtags went mainstream—no longer a tool for nerds but for everyone. And they're no longer Twitter-only; they're also supported on Instagram and Tumblr. And they are everywhere.
©Jason Rosenberg (Flickr)
©Michael Coté (Flickr)
By 2012, hashtags had entered the spoken vernacular. “Share hashtag boston party zone!” And, perhaps driven by hashtag speech, we've finally seen hashtags being almost comically misused:
"Cheeky early finish" it isn't cheeky though is it, it's been timetabled for you since September #hastagscrooge#hashtag
— Beckie (@iambeckie) December 20, 2013
http://t.co/rG8OIjmFEb it's payday and this is how i feel #breakingbadtweet#hashtag
— Joe Savage (@joesavage1) December 20, 2013
This all drove me to wonder if we've reached peak hashtag. Do they still have any relevance? Or are they just noise? If they're noise, are they degrading the signal?
What's the official word?
How does Twitter itself view hashtags? There's no official stance, but the Twitter traditional REST API's search function does not distinguish between hashtags and ordinary words. It does its best to provide relevant results based on meaning and trends. That's good—but doesn't signal that hashtags themselves are considered meaningful by Twitter's engineers.
Twitter's Streaming API, though, doesprovide hashtag information as part of the feed. Since the streams are real-time, Twitter doesn't attempt relevancy filters, leaving this instead to the outside developers who use the streams. Because of this, systems such as LiveFyre StreamHub can quickly and efficiently find hashtags and apply their own relevance criteria.
Let's also not forget the potential for metrics, the Holy Grail of effective marketing. If you can convince your customers to use specific hashtags, you can figure out what content is working. And you can do it fast—no need to wait for quarterly sales reports.
Lastly, let's not forget that other Twitter services, such as Web Intents, also provide explicit hashtag support.
Where does that leave us?
Let's recap:
- Hashtags are used extensively in marketing to encourage social engagement with brands.
- Twitter users hashtag inconsistently, making them less useful for finding or curating content.
- Twitter's search API doesn't treat hashtags as meaningful content signals.
- External Twitter developers can treat hashtags as content, if they wish.
- Twitter encourages marketers and external developers to use hashtags.
Finally, we have our answer. Brand engagement—no more, but no less! Marketers can encourage customers to both search for hashtags, and to tweet using specific hashtags.
For personal communication, then, hashtags are irrelevant. But they have tremendous value in free viral advertising, crowdsourcing content to create a buzz, and generating metrics. As Matthew Hunt noted, hashtags encourage people to talk, not just passively watch. Not just about anything, but in a directed fashion. Again, marketing.
The cynic in me has begun to see hashtags as #irrelevant #noise in my personal stream, but the idealist sees incredible potential for bringing people together. Marketing, after all, isn't a dirty word—in a broader sense, it means building awareness. And therein, perhaps, we find true meaning.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays
May your life be filled with love and peace.
Disclaimer: LiveFyre is an iMarc business partner, and RSA Conference is a client.
