Hash tags serve to mark a conversational thread on Twitter, in an effective and distinctive way. Hash tags are related with trending topics and followers search them frequently for whatever purpose. For example, if you cant go to an event being held at a certain time, you are able to follow with the twitter-stream by searching the required characters, such as # 140conf or #imbroadcast. We talk about real-time thought streaming to mention people´s thoughts that are directly registered into a search engine database. In this Twitter is the most appropriate, because of the vast majority of people who used it to transmit their thoughts on the Web. As John Borthwick, an investor in Summize ( and thus now an investor in Twitter ), explained in a blog post: “Yet at http://search.twitter.com the conversations are right there in front of you”. But Twitter is not the most suitable website to capture a colective thought streaming. For this reason, there are emerging dozens of complementary services, knows as Seesmic, Monitter, Trendsmap or Tweetearth.
According to Joshua Odmark, the main problems of using hash tags are:
- Often they have no a clear meaning due to their irrelevant context. For example: #fb
- The difficulty of distinguishing tags formed with several words, despite of using capital letters.
- Hash tags tend to be very abusive owing to the intrusion of the spammers.
- The sign “#” can create many conflicts to developers.
- The fact that they are artificial.
But hash tags also are very useful for…
1. develop the ability to create a group of engaged Twitterers.
2. provide more accurate results.
3. a reader, so much as they help to understand the meaning or purpose of a Tweet.
The best of Twitter is that it shows a flow of opinions available in a real-time search, but its current search engine is extremely crude, as Borthwick readily admits. Users only can see the most recent Tweets with the keyword they are looking for and at some point the thought stream of the masses becomes unrecognizable. The problem is that real-time search results are not ranked in an effective way. Therefore, there is a need to organize much of the vision coming from the world. Joshua Odmark, in his blog article, also realizes of this necessity saying that he expect this to change as websites index and organize these Tweets into accurate SERRPS. Of course, he proposes the opportunity of indexing tweets.
References:
Joseba Abaitua ( 2009, 4, 11 ). ”Hash tags y thought-streaming en tiempo real sobre la Web”. Translema. Consultado el 5.11.2009 en http://blogs.deusto.es/abaitua/hashtags-y-thought-streaming-en-tiempo-real-sobre-la-web/
Erick Schonfeld ( 2009, February, 15 ). “Mining The Thought Stream”. TechCrunch. Retrieved February 16 from http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/15/mining-the-thought-stream/
Joshua Odmark ( 2009, June, 24 ). “Twitter SEO – The Slow Death of Twitter Hash Tags”. Search Engine Journal. Retrieved from http://www.searchenginejournal.com/twitter-seo-hash-tags/11337/
