# Hash tags (again) **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 30, 2019, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696 "2019-01-30T22:12:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2019, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/1 "2019-01-30T22:12:09Z")
I’m sure this has already been asked, but I’m being lazy. Last night a commercial for a channel I was watching said, ‘Join the conversation at #[name].’ What does that actually mean? I only recently discovered that I have a Twitter account, and I never use it. Are you supposed to ‘follow’ #[name] on Twitter? What happens when someone uses a hashtag on Twitter or Facebook or wherever? ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2019, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/2 "2019-01-30T22:32:16Z")
If you go to [https://twitter.com/hashtag/foobar](https://twitter.com/hashtag/foobar) you will see tweets that have #foobar in them. That’s it. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2019, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/3 "2019-01-30T22:46:31Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > If you go to [https://twitter.com/hashtag/foobar](https://twitter.com/hashtag/foobar) you will see tweets that have #foobar in them. That’s it. I do not see an explanation of the use of hashtags there. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2019, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/4 "2019-01-30T22:56:36Z")
Rather than a specific forum, it’s a bit more dynamic. Anybody at all can use any hashtag at any time and quickly search for content that contains the same hashtag. If you use an obscure hashtag that nobody else uses, nothing happens. But if some people use the same hashtag and it catches on, i.e. goes viral, it can quickly generate a lot of discussion and content. You can simply search for a specific hashtag, e.g. #foobar, and see every post that contains the #foobar tag, especially the ones that have the most likes or retweets (or shares or whatever) or from people who have a lot of followers. Kind of like a flash mob in some ways but one that anybody can join at any time. ---
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2019, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/5 "2019-01-30T22:57:43Z")
The hash tag is allows posters on Tiwtter, instagram or whatever to indicate that their post is related to some topic. It is a hack to allow meta data in twitter and other social media posts. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2019, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/6 "2019-01-30T23:00:44Z")
To answer the OP directly, go to Twitter and type the _#word_ in the search box. You’ll get tweets related to that topic. I just typed in #PolarVortex and got a bunch. I don’t use other social media, but I guess it works in a similar way. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2019, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/7 "2019-01-30T23:03:45Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > I do not see an explanation of the use of hashtags there. That is literally all there is to it. What else are you looking for? ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2019, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/8 "2019-01-30T23:14:33Z")
> [@ThelmaLou](#): > > To answer the OP directly, go to Twitter and type the _#word_ in the search box. You’ll get tweets related to that topic. I just typed in #PolarVortex and got a bunch. > > I don’t use other social media, but I guess it works in a similar way. Confused like Johnny. Couldn’t you just search on PolarVortex? Does a hashtag in front of it make it searchable? Is that it/all? ---
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2019, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/9 "2019-01-30T23:40:09Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > Confused like Johnny. Couldn’t you just search on PolarVortex? Does a hashtag in front of it make it searchable? Is that it/all? This hash tag business grew organically. People started putting #foo as a way to indicate that the tweet was releated to foo. For example lets suppose people started tweets about the minor indignities of life. My cat just threw up on the carpet. #badday Without the #badday hashtag these comments are not as easily searchable. It also lets the reader know that badday is a tag and not really part of the sentence about their cat. -35 the car wont start. #PolarVortex This is searchable -35 the car wont start. This is not easily searchable. There are a bunch of different ways you could indicate topic of posts but social media has gravitated too the hashtag. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim_r.mortiss/32/142_2.png) [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2019, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/10 "2019-01-30T23:56:10Z")
A really unusual word wouldn’t need the hashtag to be searchable. But a more mundane word or phrase would - if you just searched on the word alone, you’d get \*any \*post that included that word, most of which wouldn’t be what you wanted. The hashtag lets your search only return posts where people wanted you to specifically find them with that particular search. ---
**Author:** ![PoppaSan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/poppasan/32/189_2.png) [@PoppaSan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoppaSan)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2019, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/11 "2019-01-31T01:23:33Z")
So the #word is just setting up a keyword “word” that the search engine uses? It’s like all the keywords that photo sites use? ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2019, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/12 "2019-01-31T02:26:38Z")
> [@PoppaSan](#): > > So the #word is just setting up a keyword “word” that the search engine uses? It’s like all the keywords that photo sites use? Exactly. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2019, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/13 "2019-01-31T14:24:08Z")
So does # apply only to Twitter? I’ve never used Twitter. When I see/hear references to hashtags, are these folk all directing people to search them on Twitter - or other social media as well. I don’t use ANY social media other than a moribund FB page. Is # also applicable on - I dunno - Tinder, Instagram, whatever else is popular at the moment? How about MySpace? 😉 **Johnny** - I’m with you. I often think when I hear hashtags “What the hell am I supposed to do with THAT?!” Getting more and more clueless by the day…:rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Doug\_K](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5ac83/32.png) [@Doug\_K](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_K)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2019, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/14 "2019-01-31T14:39:58Z")
> [@PoppaSan](#): > > So the #word is just setting up a keyword “word” that the search engine uses? It’s like all the keywords that photo sites use? > [@Pork\_Rind](#): > > Exactly. Well, not quite exactly. A hashtag gets displayed as a link, so that all you have to do is click on it rather than type into a search box. Which is related to a pet peeve: A # by itself is NOT a hashtag, no matter how many people use the term incorrectly. A hashtag is a hash (#) followed by a metadata tag(the keyword). This can be easily demonstrated by sending a tweet with a naked #, then sending a tweet with “#hashtag” in it. #hashtag gets turned into a link, # by itself does not. A # can also be correctly called a pound sign, a number sign, or an ocotothorpe. I think the term SHOULD be strictly a Twitter thing (I feel the same way about @username), but Facebook uses them as well. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2019, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/15 "2019-01-31T14:52:09Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > So does # apply only to Twitter? It’s where it’s most used and best supported but it’s not, strictly speaking, solely a Twitter thing. As mentioned above, it arose organically as a way to add a feature that wasn’t there before, basically something like a subject line or meta-data that would make indexing posts easier. Basically, you can insert a hashtag in any social media post you want - or blog article or news article or movie reviews or anything else online. For example, if you run a movie review site, maybe you want tag a movie as ‘superhero’ or ‘noir’ or ‘ensemble’ or ‘British’ or some combination of several categories for easier indexing. There are web tools to do that. But if you don’t have those available, you can add a hashtag on your own to make searching easier. Twitter doesn’t have the same kind of curation for individual tweets that many websites do for articles/pages, so people ended up using hashtags to replicate that sort of feature. The effect it has will vary. The level of built-in support from that app or website will vary. It works well on Twitter because there’s aren’t built-in ways to indicate a group of posts are all related to the same topic and people may want to share/bundle those posts together, e.g. the polar vortex. And naturally, other social media sites will replicate something that works. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2019, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/16 "2019-01-31T14:57:31Z")
I’m pretty sure that @username was widespread even before Twitter existed. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2019, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/17 "2019-01-31T15:05:43Z")
> [@gazpacho](#): > > This hash tag business grew organically. People started putting #foo as a way to indicate that the tweet was releated to foo. Could other “tags” be used organically? For example, could some users start tagging their tweets with & or = or ++? &newbie =dumbquestions clueless++ ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2019, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/18 "2019-01-31T15:13:22Z")
I suppose so. You could append +ihatethehash onto your tweets and it would function like a hashtag in that anyone who just typed +ihatethehash into Twitter’s search box would see your tweet. But it wouldn’t be supported by the app the way hashtags are. No automatic linking, no way to get it to trend, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2019, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/19 "2019-01-31T15:14:55Z")
Here’s an article on the history of [Twitter’s hashtags](https://blog.bufferapp.com/a-concise-history-of-twitter-hashtags-and-how-you-should-use-them-properly). ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2019, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696/20 "2019-01-31T15:21:50Z")
And, of course, they are also used colloquially and in context where there is no searchability intended (like in speech, text messages, message boards, etc.) as a way to – how best to describe this – make a parenthetical comment on the preceding post or to use a standalone hashtag meme as a comment itself. It’s a bit hard for me to put exactly in words, but I must often see my friends post hashtags using them in this way rather than a metadata searchability way (except on Instagram, where hashtags are pretty much the lifeblood of finding anything there.) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hash-tags-again/828696.md?page=2)