I’ll play.
- What’s a hash tag?
- How do the news people know what’s “trending” on Twitter today?
Hashtags are the weird things set off by a pound sign and they’re also what trends. So, for example it looks like a trend today is #DisneyChannelClassics. If I click on it, I see all the tweets that have the hashtag #DisneyChannelClassics in the tweet and I can sort it by top, all or my friends, meaning I can see the relevant tweets that have been retweeted the most, the most recent relevant tweets from anyone who has a public twitter or relevant tweets from my specific friends.
There’s a list on the side that displays trending topics.
Thanks. That pretty much answers all the questions I’ll ever want to know about Twitter.
Sometimes you genuinely don’t know the answers. I had to ask someone the same question in the OP - I also didn’t know it was something online. But I did ask a social-media friendly…er, friend, to answer it.
Does Twitter assign the hashtag, or do people? Who decides something’s trending?
Farmer Jane - I really know nothing about Twitter and how it works. Sometimes these threads are asked in a genuine spirit of inquisitiveness. I’ll snark about it later, when I understand it better.
StG
I occasionally log into facebook or twitter to reaffirm my belief that I couldn’t possibly care less about what anybody else has posted there, which in turn leads me to the conclusion that they also wouldn’t care about anything I might post, so I don’t post anything. I think this is a valuable service.
A hashtag is usercreated. Twitter automatically recognizes anything following a pound sign as a hash tag. Trending hashtags are just hashtags that are used by a ridiculously large number of people.
Twitter is also an incredibly useful tools at times. We use it at the California State Speech Tournament to alert competitors as to postings, results, room changes, etc. One hashtag reaches thousands of students.
Follow Nathan Fillion or Patton Oswalt for a taste of what Twitter is like. Or Wil Wheaton.
Items don’t have to have a #hashtag in order to trend.
Complaining about it because it’s narcissistic is a tad silly considering even messageboards are fueled by some degree of narcissism and attention seeking. Why the hell would you post on SDMB if you didn’t think people read your shit?
I find twitter a great timewaster but it’s also helped me build friendships, get gigs, etc. I think you could use it in a professional capacity and depending on your industry it might benefit you. I would say it’d be useful for an industry person of whatever so to keep on top of the latest news and to make short comment on it. If you’re too busy to draft a blog post on a news item you can make a short comment. I don’t think it’s indicative of people’s attention spans going, it’s just different pace and has a different utility to other online platforms.
News people like to report on what’s trending because it’s so easy. In reality, it’s not really very interesting. If there is an earthquake people will be talking about the earthquake, just like you’d expect.
The 140 character limit isn’t the big deal you would think. Many people post links to a blog or forum message that has their thoughts, which is just fine if it’s someone whose opinion you like to read.
Don’t underestimate the effort it takes to get a good list of people to follow. You probably won’t like Twitter if you aren’t going to make that effort. I’ve probably dropped 90% of everyone I followed, but I still read my twitter feed at least once a day.
In addition to microblogging, Twitter serves as a form of public instant messaging. It’s not just about who you follow either.
When the power goes out, I search for the name of my utility company. I can see that people have notified them of the outage, and what areas do and don’t have power, and the company lets us know when to expect repairs.
I was at a conference once, and someone who was setting up a presentation tweeted that they needed a certain type of computer cable. Within minutes, someone who was searching on the name of the conference saw that, and gave them a cable.
I once heard about a bicyclist who ran off the road and was injured. No one she telephoned answered her call for help. So she tweeted something including the name of the location, and some one who was searching on that name read it and came to her rescue.
I’ve never tweeted either but I do follow the news feeds. It’s also a great way to keep up on science and space stuff - NASA, JPL, LHC, etc. The Bad Astronomer tweets a lot. A while back I was watching the live webcast of the meeting to announce findings concerning the Higgs boson. The Bad Astronomer and Brian Cox were on Twitter at the same time posting live footnotes. It helped me to understand what the big brains were saying. And I thought it was cool as hell.
Plus Neil Patrick Harris’ food porn is pretty interesting.
I’ve begrudgingly started to adopt Twitter. I don’t understand third party twitter apps like tweetdeck, though.
Or rather, I understand that they exist, I just fail to see what advantage they offer over Twitter’s stock app on my phone, or why anyone would take the time to program them!
For professional use Twitter works as an open arena for PIOs (Press Information Officers) to distribute info to interested parties very rapidly and with minimal fuss. In the old days you would have to get on mailing lists, etc. Now from their phone police & fire PIOs give people near real time updates on events, and this info can be followed by anyone who is interested.
For that reason I find it useful. I do not follow anyone for social reasons, for I could care less about that crap. But for certain business purposes it works well.
Some of them just work more reliably than the stock one or for example use fewer data resources.
My other half uses twitter for work - he’s a photographer and has secured quite a few jobs through Twitter…He will tweet a (minor) celeb ‘we would love to photograph @nameofceleb’ and then wait for the fans of said celeb to start retweeting/replying. Quite a few of them have contacted my other half saying it appears his/her fans say he/she should do a shoot with my partner
There’s one account called @RealTimeWW2 that is pretty awesome. It posts tweets as news updates from WW2 as if they’re happening in real-time. They’re up to 1940 right now, so a tweet today would be a news update from July 25, 1940. Most recent tweet: “USA has banned export of petrol or scrap metal without special export licence - Germany, Italy & Japan now essentially economically blockaded.” An hour ago, they posted: “UK War Cabinet: comparatively quiet week for air attacks; still waiting for ‘Battle of Britain’ Churchill prophesied.” It’s interesting to see everything methodically unfold in real time.
So some people use the format to get a little creative outside of “I ate at Taco Bell today.”
I mainly use Twitter to follow celebrities I like and various news sites. I also ask questions or make comments to various people on Twitter, like celebrities or news gatherers or something similar. I rarely use it make personal comments; tweeting what I had for breakfast isn’t my thing. These past few days for example, I kept up with the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour by following various critics on Twitter. When I’m home and working on my computer, I don’t tend to have CNN.com up like I do at work, so if a celebrity dies or a big event like the Colorado shootings happens, I usually find out about it first on Twitter.
At the moment, I use Twitter to keep up with soccer and all the summer transfer rumors, but recently, it came in pretty handy for news updates when the wife & I and about 50 other people had just gotten off the bus at Downsview Park to see Radiohead. There was a security guard standing at the entrance to the venue who would tell us nothing, except “Concert’s been cancelled. Check the Live Nation website for details.” A simple 10-second Twitter search told us what had happened.