What are hashtags?

Hashtags are simply a way to group tweets together by topic. They are a keyword, or words (with no spaces), and start with the # symbol. You don’t need to register them anywhere – you just make them up. By using the # symbol, they become clickable links. Click on a hashtag and you will see everyone’s tweets containing that hashtag as a list updated in real time. Click on this one to see what this looks like: #followfriday

The most popular show up in the ‘trending topics’ list in the right-hand column of your Twitter page. Trending topics may or may not include the # symbol.

So what is #followfriday?

‘Following’ on Twitter is like ‘friending’ on other social networks, except you usually don’t need to get your follow request approved – unless someone has protected their tweets. You just click the ‘follow’ button on their Twitter profile, and their tweets will show up in the timeline on your page.

#followfriday is a little game that Twitterers play on a Friday. It’s a way of recommending interesting people to follow. It can also be a way of finding people to follow (especially if you’re new to Twitter), and for building your followers if your friends think you’re interesting enough to recommend!

Other alliterative variations take place on other days of the week:

• #musicmonday for recommending music
• #charitytuesday for recommending – you guessed it – charities.

Other days are more or less up for grabs, if you want to have a go at starting your own trend. Various attempts at this have been made, including #woofwednesday for following pets. I know.

How to #followfriday

Don’t just recommend your mates – at least not without a reason. #followfriday works best when you list a few people, and give a reason, or group them by the type of Tweeters they are. That way people can decide if your recommendations look of interest to them, without having to click through to the accounts of those people first to find out what they tweet about. One of the downsides to Twitter is that it’s just so vast – where do you start to find people to follow? #followfriday is a way of using your network to filter through the great unwashed mass of information on Twitter.

Here are a couple of examples from my recent past:

So now you know how to #followfriday, get following, recommending and tweeting!