What the hell is a hashtag?

What the hell is a hashtag? You hear about it every day on television and on the radio. Back in the day a hashtag referred to a bunch of young people smoking it and chasing each other around. Oh but wait, I know that can’t be it,… can it?

So I decided to do a bit of research. Maybe I’m behind the times or a little old fashion, but I swear I really wasn’t sure what a hashtag was until I started writing this article.

So a hashtag basically refers to twitter. A hashtag is a # which immediately preceeds a key word in a tweet. The action of using a hashtag (ex: #hashtags) helps to categorize a tweet and in turn helps it show up more easily in a tweeter search. If you click on the hashtag in a tweet, it will show you all other tweets which are marked with that keyword. They can occur anywhere in a tweet. Hashtagged words that become very popular are referred to as trending.

So there you have it folks, a brief explanation of the infamous #hashtag. Hopefully you are less confused than I am right now.