Web Jargon for New Online Activists, Part 1: Hashtags and Twitter Search

At the RightOnline conference opening panel, it became pretty obvious that there is a need for a guide to Internet jargon for activists. There are sites that explain how to use Twitter, sure, but none or few that are obviously directed to a political audience. And people who need 101 guides to Twitter, for example, are not necessarily expert Google searchers. You don’t need to be an expert, but you have to know what you’re looking for–and not everyone does. And that’s ok!

I’m going to run a series of brief posts to help with this, both with simple explanations and links to others who have done the same.

What is a hashtag and why does it matter? How does it help my social network grow? How does it help me get information to more people–or find information that interests me?

On Twitter, a hashtag is a codeword or acronym preceded by a #-sign that aids searching and provides a way to file your messages. For example, here at the RightOnline conference, Tweets about the conference are marked with the hashtag #righton. Because I’m attending the conference and interested in the online conversation, I’m following all Tweets with that hashtag. I’m also taking “notes” in the different panels and sessions I attend and including the hashtag so that my Tweets are filed with other messages about the conference.

Once you identify a hashtag that you’d like to follow, there are a couple ways you can do that–and the simplest way is to visit search.twitter.com. Type in the hashtag and then any Tweets that have come up.

This gets even easier once you learn how to use TweetDeck to simplify and speed up your Twitter usage. I might write my own guide to TweetDeck later, but for now, if you get the hashtag and search thing – or maybe even if you don’t – this is a good resource on how to use TweetDeck.

For now, back to the conference!

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Related posts:

1. RightOn: Heading to RightOnline in Pittsburgh
2. Liberal Children’s Books: A Spontaneous Twitter Game
3. CPAC Twitter Updates

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 14th, 2009 at 1:26 pm and is filed under New and Old Media. The entry is tagged under hashtag, online activism, twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.