Actually, I
was not a frequent user of twitter, back in 2009 when I was in Forum Nokia
Developer Conference in Bangalore it was my first time to actually witnessing
people using the Twitter hash tag. The event organizers promise to give Nokia
N500 for someone who will have the largest number of tweets at the end of the
event. It was totally confusing, I didn’t blame myself actually for a new
twitter user the hash tag are very
confusing. Few
month back when Google come to Tanzania, I could see again people have the same
problem , the presenter give out the #tag for people to share the same topic
but yet it was not that much interactive.
So what is the twitter hash Tag? A
hash tag is simply a way for people to search for tweets that have a common
topic. For example, if you search on #DarGTUG (or
# DarGTUG or # darGTUG, because it's not case-sensitive), you'll get a list of
tweets related to the Dar es Salaam Google users group. What you won't get are
tweets that say "Dargtug is
very nice group" because "Dargtug”
isn't preceded by the hash tag.
Even if the
world “DarGTUG” is not involved in the statement you have written but you
involved the #DarGTUG still when someone searched for the tweet, you will
definitely find your tweet on the search results. For example: do you think the presenter is cool? #DarGTUG, the tweet will pop up in the search
results.
Hint, A hash tag is simply a way for people to search for tweets that have a common topic.
Hint, A hash tag is simply a way for people to search for tweets that have a common topic.
You can
create your own topic also for example if you want to talk about the current
teachers strike in Tanzania. You can simply create something like #Mgomo and simply by telling your friend whenever they speak
about the teachers strike they should share the topic through #Mgomo. You have
to make sure that, the #tag does not exist. For example how to know this just
search for the term “Mgomo” in the basic twitter search and see the result and
then search for the actual #tag; #Mgomo and see the result. From there you can
have your tweets with your #tag for example: Is
the government corresponding effectively to the teacher’s needs? #Mgomo
The only
drawback of #tags is that if someone posted a tweet about the current strike in
Tanzania without embedding or using the #tag (#Mgomo)
then the search
result won’t display the tweet on the search results. For example: The teacher’s strike is going to another level…..
An
interesting fact is that #tags
are not even in the list of the functions which are officially provided by
Twitter. The company has not created a list of
topics that we can browse through to see if there's one that interests us.
Actually is just something the users create so that they can have more
attention and contribution to a certain particular topic which is being
discussed at that time which affect by one way or the other. So even you can
create your own #tag just make sure to promote to other users so that you all
can be using the same #tag for the same exact topic.
GreenTech360
@GTech360
Jumanne Mtambalike (gTech360) is a Software Engineer,IT consultant and Web designer based in Africa, currently living in Dar es Salaam Tanzania