Entry #7: The Ghost of Hashtag Past

 A hashtag, in terms of functionality, is just a way of grouping posts about a similar trending topic on social media websites. They have other uses, but this is the most prominent one that is used currently. 

 At the time of writing this, #MamaJune was trending. It seemed to be about a TV show, because many people were discussing it as if they had just watched an episode where something new had happened. For example, Here are two tweets discussing the hashtag. 

 

Sources: Tweet #1, Tweet #2

Despite not watching the TV show they're discussing (or caring enough to look more into it), I can still recognize the importance of this feature. It allows for people to post about this show and for others who are interested in it to view their posts about it, potentially even allowing for discussing about the TV show. 

Despite being useful, its evident that hashtags have in some sense fallen off in usage due to social media platforms being able to pick up trending topics without the need for them to be hashtagged. For example, take a look at this screenshot of the trending tab on twitter.

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None of these items are about hashtags specifically, but they still show up as trending topics. I'm going to click the second one, Nahobino, to show why that is. (Picking that one specifically because it's about something I like)

(Source)

By looking closely at the tweets, you can see the word Nahobino bolded in order to make it stand out. No hashtag in sight, either. By doing this, twitter is showing off it's capability of picking up on these words and organizing them into a trending tab without the need for the individual posters to add a hashtag to it. This allows for more posts to be categorized by this by not excluding those who may not choose to use #Nahobino. It does, however, still include any use of the word hashtagged as well. 

(Source) 

Despite being much less used now than it once was, hashtags served as an important gateway for allowing algorithms to categorize information for easier classification. It goes to show how sometimes trends can become features, and those features can change the way people use online platforms.