#B2Bchat (b2b_chat) What The Trend. Find out WHY terms are trending on Twitter. What Makes a Good Hashtag? It’s Not Science: Tech News and Analysis « If you spend any time on Twitter, you’ve probably seen a hashtag — it’s a keyword with a number sign in front of it, which is used to refer to an ongoing conversation of some kind. Hashtags can occasionally take off and become trends that dominate the Twitter-sphere for periods of time, and that’s exactly what happened recently with the “#lessambitiousmovies” tag. But how do these trends evolve, and how long do they last?
The Twitter media blog did a forensic analysis of the latest example, but the really interesting thing is just how random — and short-lived — these Twitter storms can be. It’s much more of an art (or barely-controlled chaos) than it is a science. As Liz Gannes noted in a piece last year, the first tweet with a hashtag in it came from Chris Messina — then a consultant and now the open-web advocate at Google. They soon came to be used for any ongoing conversation about a topic, and really took off during the San Diego fires of 2007.
What the Hashtag? What the Hashtag is a hashtag trending service for Twitter. The service provides hashtag definitions, resources, usage statistics, transcripts and more. You can add quick definitions from our home page or via Twitter, but signing up on WTH? Allows you to add even more content, like expanded descriptions, related hashtags and links. Recent Milestones Videos Screenshots Above: What the Hashtag? Above: Homepage July 2009Uploaded: 7/7/09 Sources Citation Needed [add] #mmchat - What the Hashtag?!