What is Hashtag and Mention

Both were born on Twitter, but have transcended the borders of happiness social network to be part not only of other social networks, but also of contemporary culture.

A hashtag is a brand that allows you to follow a conversation on a certain topic, while a mention directly appeals to a user, who receives a notification, and can respond directly

To create the hashtags, Twitter decided on the symbol # (known as hash) preceding a word or set of these (as long as there are no spaces between), a symbol that in computing it had been used extensively before.

For example, in the IRC chat service, the pound sign is used to indicate the channels on which to chat.

Its use on Twitter has spread over time to all social networks, being adopted among others by Facebook, Google Plus or Instagram, and in all its use it is identical:

by clicking on a hashtag determined, we can see listed all the entries of the social network that include the same hashtag

Thus, for example, if on Twitter or Facebook we click with the mouse on the

hashtag #technology, what we will get will be a list of all the tweets made by users (regardless of whether we follow them or not) in which they have included said hashtag.

Likewise, if we do it on Facebook, we will obtain a list of the entries made by users that contain the same hashtag.

The objective of the hashtags is to allow Internet users, users of social networking services, to participate in a global conversation

Both with known people (contacts) and with complete strangers of which, in addition, we can end up making followers or friends.

How do we use the hashtags? These can arise by "generation spontaneous ”, when an Internet user invents one to rate an event or follow an event that is being developed, or orchestrated, when the organization of an event decides to agree the hashtag that you are going to use.

In this way, we can see in television programs how a hashtag determined at the top or bottom of the screen to follow the conversation global, or in a conference the “hashtag official".

For its part, the mention is a way of citing a specific user, so that the latter receives a notification, thus being able to respond directly. It is, therefore, a direct appeal to the user.

The symbol chosen to precede the name of Username In one mention it is the at sign (@), also widely used in the world of computing, usually linked with usernames, such as the one found in the addresses of email, and that separates the username from the server name.

The mentions also began, in the way we know them today, on Twitter, to later move on to other social networks, having recently reached WhatsApp

Photos: Fotolia - RabidBadger / Magann

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