hashtags are a really important part of
Twitter but what is a hashtag anyway
simply put a hashtag is any word or
phrase that's included in a tweet that
starts with a hashtag symbol which is
also called the pound sign or number
symbol when someone includes a hashtag
with the tweet
they're basically categorizing it so why
do people do this well if you select a
hashtag you'll see other tweets that
include it as well this is an easy way
to see what's happening on Twitter or
follow along with a popular topic since
the posts on Twitter is so short a
hashtag is often abbreviated in this
case we're looking at the hashtag OTD
and based on these other tweets it looks
like that stands for on the state so on
the state in history all these different
things have happened hashtags also make
it easy to join in and become a part of
this bigger conversation to use a
hashtag just select a new tweet button
and you can see in this example since
we're are you looking at the OTD hashtag
it was included automatically in our
tweet now we'll type our post and that's
it
we just posted a tweet with a hashtag
and that means that anyone else looking
at tweets related to the hashtag can
find it easily hashtags are also an easy
way to see what's popular or trending on
Twitter in this example we're using the
Twitter app for iPhone so we're gonna
select the search box to see trending
topics the process should be pretty
similar if you're using Twitter on a
different device in a desktop web
browser you'll see these under trends
just like before we can select a hashtag
to see more tweets about it
another thing we'd like to mention are
the search filters if you're using the
Twitter app you'll select the search
filters icon near the top and if you're
using Twitter on the desktop you should
be able to click anywhere in the search
bar to access these same options from
here you can narrow down your results to
see only photos about this hashtag or
only videos
Twitter users that might be relevant to
this hashtag or even just tweets from
people you follow that include it
all right that's all we've got those are
the basics of hashtags on Twitter