Ain't she tweet

One of the challenges of being over 60 and trying to keep pace with the changing world around me is using social media, How do I befriend (or should I say “friend”) it and use it to best advantage?

     That’s why one of my “virgin” resolutions for this year was to learn how to use a hashtag – the “#” symbol that is used to mark keywords in a Twitter post to categorize them so they’ll show up more easily in a Twitter search.

     But first, I wanted to know why hashtags are so-called.

     It turns out that in commonwealth English, the symbol we Americans call a pound sign or number sign is called a hash, and the telephone dial button that has the “#” on it is called a hash key.

     On Twitter, the online networking service that lets you send and receive text posts of up to 140 characters, hashtags help you find the most interesting postings about that subject. If you click on a hashtagged word in a Tweet (posting), for example, it shows you all the other Tweets in that category. Hashtagged words that become very popular are often Twitter Trending Topics, which I gather is kind of like going viral on UTube.

     But first, I needed a basic Twitter lesson, so I turned to my friend Melissa, a social networking master and a real tweetheart to boot.

     I already knew that Tweets were great for communicating urgent news instantaneously – e.g., the British are coming – and Melissa said they are indeed a tool.

    But she mentioned something this techno-resistant writer had never considered – that, because Tweets must be 140 characters or fewer – they force the writer to be concise, thoughtful and creative in the process of composing. Kind of like social networking haiku.

     That softened my heart somewhat. So I duly signed up for a Twitter account and sent my first Tweet – to all four of the people I am so far following. One (OK, it was Melissa) even reTweeted it.

     Now for the hashtag part. I’m tweeting a link to THIS blog post on Twitter (@wildogfarm) with the hashtags #over60 and #hashtags.

     We’ll see what happens.