#LetsChatAboutThese

A little out of date, but it expresses my sentiments
Source: http://bit.ly/Zokl35

Perhaps you've heard of the hashtag. It looks a little something like a pound or number sign: #. I don't know about you, but I've seen a million Facebook statuses that look like this:

"#I #don't #know #why #people #are #using #these #number #signs #in #their #statuses #but #I'm #going #to #do #it #to"

Or perhaps you've seen them on TV in the bottom corner of your screen. My mom noticed them last year during the olympics.

She asked, "What does pound sign olympics mean?"

Well I kind of happen to be a social media snob/know-it-all (it's rude I know, but it comes with studying social media in college), anywho, these types of statuses statuses always drive me insane. I always wonder if I should let people know what hashtags mean, and this post is my effort to educate my friends and anyone else who cares about hashtags. Let's call it  #Hashtag101.

• Hashtags are used to link conversations together through a mutual topic. With the example of my mom the #olympics was used to connect conversations about the olympics. If you click on a hashtag is will pull up all the other content with that same tag. Comprende?
• When you use a hashtag the content becomes public, despite your privacy settings. Be aware of this especially on Instagram! If you have a private profile and you use a hashtag in your caption that content (or photo) is now public. This is because hashtags are used to link content together (see above)
• Hashatgs are now available on Facebook, but they were not previously. Hashtags are now used on most social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all use them. 
• Hashtags don't work with punctuation marks. This means no apostrophes, commas, periods. Numbers do work with hastags. 

And that is #Hashtag101 according to Rebekah. Now please, #hashtag responsibly.