The Rise Of The Hashtag

Follow enough people on Facebook for long enough, and you will become aware of the use of the hashtag. Another of those words that has become common parlance in the last year or so due to the reach of Facebook, the hashtag is a simple enough concept, perhaps best explained by an example:

Say you have been taking an interest in a news story. For example, the biggest story of 2009 has probably been the death of Michael Jackson. At the time, people who had just heard the news would often finish their tweet with the tag #ripmj or #ripmichaeljackson. By doing this, it flags up the fact that your tweet was about that particular issue.

Your Facebook homepage will have a list on the right hand side titled “Trending Topics”. This is a list of the ten most frequently used phrases or words currently appearing in people’s tweets. By clicking on the topic you can see what people are saying about the story. If you have not directly used the words, adding a hashtag at the end means that your tweet will show up in any search using that hashtag.

The use of hashtags should be approached carefully, however, as many people see it as attention seeking. By using the hashtag, people feel that you are simply trying to get your tweet seen by as many people as possible. Add to this the fact that, if an issue is “trending”, then it will be getting tweeted about possibly hundreds of times in a minute – and the chances are no-one but your followers will see it anyway, so think before you use them.

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Harassment On Facebook

One of the things that makes Facebook so instant is that it is moderated reactively rather than proactively. As a result, when you post something it goes into the stream of tweets instantly and can be read by anyone with access to the feed. While this is popular because it allows a steady flow of posts and lets you speak freely, it does have its drawbacks, not least of which is the fact that it does allow people to tweet things that others may not want to read.

Among the negative aspects of this is the fact that if someone takes a dislike to you on Facebook, they can bombard you with unpleasant @replies and encourage their followers to do likewise, or drive a wedge between you and friends. They can be reported to Facebook, and anyone abusing an account will be banned from the site, but this does not preclude them from setting up another account and tweeting from another IP address. Neither does it change the fact that they can do it in the first place.

One solution to this, although it is a partial one and not foolproof, is that you can protect your tweets and prevent people from seeing what you post unless they have been approved by you. It does not immediately prevent people from randomly insulting you, but it does lessen the possibility that you will appear on their radar. Aside from this it is difficult to totally prevent such idiots from harassing you, but remember, they’re just a line of text and if they are devoting their time to attacking you, they’re quite the moron anyway.

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