The Aloha09 Project and hashtags

Some social media folks here in Hawaii have been pro­mot­ing a spe­cial hash­tag — #aloha09 — to mark the best of Hawaii in 2009. There’s a track­ing page to fol­low these mes­sages at aloha09.808talk.com and an arti­cle about the project at Aloha 2009.

A hash­tag is a short string of text that can be inserted into a microblog­ging post on ser­vices like Twit­ter. Microblog­ging mes­sages are usu­ally very short, but a hash­tag helps users search across an entire ser­vice for mes­sages about a spe­cific event. The Twit­ter Fan Wiki has a good arti­cle about hash­tags.

Another pop­u­lar hash­tag today has been #happy09, which pro­motes pos­i­tive think­ing dur­ing 2009.

It’s easy to find pop­u­lar hash­tags by check­ing a ser­vice like hashtags.org that tracks and charts Twit­ter traf­fic. Twitter.com and many Twit­ter clients have a search fea­ture that can also find mes­sages with hashtags.

Tagged as: #happy09, aloha09, hashtag, Hawaii, Honolulu, Oahu, power, tag, tagging, twitter