Hash
Posted by Susan Orlean
The semiology and phenomenology of hashtaggery intrigues me. From what I understand, it all began very simply: on Twitter, hashtags—those little checkerboard marks that look like this #—were used to mark phrases or names, in order to make it easier to search for them among the zillions and zillions of tweets. For instance, if you wanted to make a comment about Sarah Palin, you could include her name in the tweet, or you could make the comment and follow it with her name marked by hashtag. That is, you could tweet,
“I would rather have a moose for President than Sarah Palin!”
Or, making good use of a hashtag,
“I would rather have a moose for President! #SarahPalin”.
The tweet with the hashtag was more likely to come up in a search for tweets about Sarah Palin, as well as being punchier and more exclamatory. The practice is now a Twitter standard.