Clickable #hashtags - now on Twitter!

July 1, 6:08 PMUsing Computers ExaminerHarold Nolte

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Twitter updates its site regularly with new features.  One of the latest features is clickable (searchable) hashtags. 

Hashtags are now links that are displayed in a different color.  They can be clicked to automatically do a search for the given hashtag.  Simply choose a hashtag you want to search, and click it. 

You used to have to copy and paste it, or retype it in the search box.  But in the era of master-bathrooms-with-two-sinks, clickable hashtags are a welcome change.  I mean, how could anyone survive with only one sink in their master bathroom today? 

What are hashtags? 

Twitter hashtags are a word or series of words (without spaces) that users want to set apart from the rest of the text.  They are prepended with the pound sign (#).  As shown in the picture above, hashtags can be anything you want. 

An example of a hashtag is #smcslc.  It consists of the initials for the Salt Lake City Social Media Club.  If anyone on Twitter wants to see recent tweets about this club, they can search for #slcsmc.  A search for #slcsmc results in a list of all tweets that contain that hashtag. 

Twitter's trending topics are the ten most discussed topics on Twitter at the current time.  There are always several hashtags that are trending.  You can get a quick idea about what's going on in Twitterland by viewing the trending topics on the right side of Twitter's page. 

One trending topic (hashtag) that has dominated for almost three weeks is #iranelection.  Other related topics have been #iran and #neda.  These are related to the peoples' uproar about Iran's election results. 

More information on hashtags 

Use www.hashtags.org to get lots of information about current hashtags.  You can get ideas on which hashtags to use to get maximum exposure for your tweets. 

Go to this article about promoting yourself using hashtags. 

So next time you are on Twitter, notice the #hashtags and try clicking on some to see how this new feature works. 

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