What the Heck are all those Hashtags on Twitter?

This whole social media thing has been quite a trip.

This post was a result of me seeing #ff on twitter and having no idea what it meant. I guessed that it meant follow or favourite? Not quite.

I checked it out and it means Follow Friday and when someone is tagged with #ff it means that you are encouraging others to follow them on Twitter. This doesn’t necessarily happen on a Friday though.

Using #ff (or #followfriday) in a tweet along with 1 or more @names means you recommend those people as worth following.

The interesting thing about Twitter is that things like hashtags eg. #ff have come about organically. Started off by Twitter users and then used more frequently till it caught on as a standard thing. It can be frustrating as there is no real twitter guide or instructions. It’s like being in the in crowd. Once you use it enough you’ll know what all the tags and stuff mean. No wonder there are some people who say they loathe Twitter and prefer Facebook. For me it’s the other way around. I find there is more privacy control and less junk with Twitter.

photo by bookjunkie

Here are more from this cool site called Tagdef that’s making it all crystal clear to me:

#nf means now following
#gts means guess the song
#oomf means one of my followers

Charlie Sheen has been responsible for loads of new ones like (funny plus a huge dose of ego, but I love the creativity)

#biwinning which means I win here I win there… now what
#sheenius which means an intellectual on the level of Charlie Sheen (quite egotistical huh?)
#dogspeed a take on godspeed to wish someone good fortune
#gnarlington is a person worthy of Charlie Sheen’s notice

And here I just got the handle on what ROFL and STFU means.

Before I end this post I just want to thank the wonderful NoodleThread for #ff ing me and introducing to this new strange world of hashtags.

About bookjunkie

Blogging about life in Singapore & recently cancer too.
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11 Responses to What the Heck are all those Hashtags on Twitter?

  1. I like facebook not twitter because twitter has never been straight forward. Although, I admit, once I figured out how to use hashtags for research a certain subject, I came across the BEST shared articles on the web. My favorites were the #prayforjapan links. I feel like I got first hand information.

    I also adore using acronyms such as ROFL or ROFLMAO. Also in personal notes I tend to abbreviate such as How r u. In Italy they use X for per, meaning for. So, instead of per te, the say x te. Or xche for perche’. It’s a kids thing but I like it.

    Julie

  2. Kaho says:

    Very interesting topic! I learned a lot from you! I use facebook for personal and Twitter for more business. I don’t have business, but blogging is sort of on the business side rather than personal. I love the level of interaction I can get through twitter. I thought that it was interesting to hear you say that Twitter has more privacy control and less junk. That’s true! Thanks also for a sweet comment on my blog! I’ll wear a sac for you! 😛

  3. kirsten says:

    My favourite SG-centric hashtags at the moment are #sgelections (obviously), and #smgohsaysdontcomplainsomuch. When events like NDP or the political forums come along they can be very handy for discussions on Twitter.

    I also went to Paper.li and got a daily aggregate paper made up of the #sgelections tweets today: http://paper.li/tag/sgelections <- it's cool because it puts up all the links and everything that appears on Twitter in relation to this topic!

    • bookjunkie says:

      Those are great Singapore hashtags…I didn’t know about the second one….must check it out.

      Your new page is wonderful….especially with the elections excitement. Hope you get to vote even though you’ll be overseas…..we really need your vote.

  4. you’re welcome! you’re so cute, too. “And here I just got the handle on what ROFL and STFU means.” lol

    but yeah, im not big on using hashtags in twitter (lazy). there’s only a few that i sometimes use, #FF being one of them. twitter and facebook can be pretty different if you start nitpicking. but i agree with kaho. fb is for personal use and twitter is more public and general for me.

  5. Lady J says:

    Thanks for sharing this bookjunkie! Very useful and insightful infor to the world of Twitter. I was wondering what those hashtags were but (as usual never got round to checking it out).

    Interestingly, I saw this quote on Twitter that I could actually relate to and thought I like to share : “Twitter makes you love people you’ve never met and Facebook makes you hate people you actually know.” ~ Scotty Rosenberg

    Could I add one more to your list? FTW = For the win. 😉

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