The hashtag revolution

These days smart companies use hashtags in their social media campaigns to understand their reach and for the way they work as a ‘viral buzz tool’ or online word of mouth. Once used by one tweeter, the campaign gets the eyes of his or her followers, and if they use it so do their followers, and it can go on and on.

When hashtags are used on Twitter, users can search and find all the uses of that particular tag by users who make their updates public. Uses of hashtags can also be found when searching on engines such as Google.

In 2007, Chis Messina sent the first hastag for #barcamp, according to Readwriteweb.com. His #barcamp hashtag was intended to bundle conversation about the global technology unconference gatherings called Barcamp that Messina helped found as well.

Jamaicans have also begun using hashtags. Among the popular ones are: #FreeBuju, which at one point was trending on Twitter during his trial; and Fashion Night Out Jamaica with the tag #FNOja, which saw many persons tweeting about the event and using the hashtag.

Corporate Jamaica is also catching on. Scotia Investments, for example, has an online contest Panmedia is monitoring that is asking Facebook users to suggest topics for their next webinar and hashtags #namethewebinar and #scotiawebinar are being used.

Hashtags are clearly very influential in the online and social media world and are likely to be in the near future.