Today, Twitter unveiled its long awaited photo and video sharing, not only leaving the likes of Twitpic, Yfrog and Twitvid in the dust... with a twist: pushing hashtags. Watch Twitter's new "Top pictures" and "Top Videos" soon becoming the latest buzz word in both social and mainstream media.
In watching the official unveiling video below, Twitter is smartly appealing to users' love-hate relationship with the ubiquitous 140 characters limit: too limiting to ramble but fantastic to consume and digest.
Upgrade
Twitter does this by upgrading the old age adage: "A picture is worth 1,000 words" by adding to it that "A hashtag is worth a 1,000 pictures". Something a simple as a # and a word more meaningful than 1,000 pictures? Tall order you think? Maybe not so for those among us who dabbled with the use of hashtags on Twitter.
If you put the #perfectmoment hashtag side by side along with an actual picture of what someone decided it was the representation of a perfect moment; which do you think will be more powerfully meaningful? Your imagination or the visual representation of someone else's judgment?
Make Business Relevant
From a strict platform business relevance, it seems obvious that Twitter is also taking advantage of the new sharing feature to encourage the use of hashtags.This in effects amounts to hire users in helping it crowdsource and make more searchable, the 50 million tweets it garners every day. This, as illustrated by hashtag linked photos and videos Twitter displays in its video. The more relevant its search results will be the more attractive the platform will become.
Reel In Users
Furthermore, and from a strict user experience, this move also helps it pragmatically explain to users, and especially potential new users, what hashtags are. In my experience, the Twitter hashtag concept is always a sticky point for new users to grasp and it is at same time, often a deterrent for would be users, as it makes Twitter look to them rather gibberish to comfortably approach.
Smart move, don't you think?
What Are Hashtags Anyway?
By Twitter's definition, a hashtag, represented by the symbol #, "is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages". But overtime it has become much more than a categorization tool.
Given the 140 characters limit of a tweet - limit which in many ways turned out a blessing - , many Twitter and social networks users in general, use it to express an emotion, give context or clarification to a tweet. Imagine what this tweet would mean without the #scarcasm hashtag? And how many characters would it take to explain its true meaning?
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In the second tweet below and without '#sarcasm', quickly grasping the intent of @Carcharius, may prove difficult, given other conversations @mrtuckbox and @helenzille may be in, without searching for the replied to tweet (shown in smaller font in the screenshot below). For added reference, the tweet author may also have also added: #SeaPoint or #Tickets or #Police.
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Many will also tell you that hashtags may soon become the new official URL to display... all the way to ornamenting business cards.
Do you use hashtags on Twitter? How about other places? What's been your experience with it?
