4 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Twitter #hashtag

In a story over the weekend, the Gray Lady laid out what these old-fangled things are about and quoted Ginger Wilcox, founder of the Social Media Marketing Institute, who called 2010 the “year of the hashtag.”

Imagine the jubilee in the Times newsroom when someone finally heralded, “Trend story!” Joking aside, the article does offer some useful and interesting information about hashtags. Here are a few examples:

1. Advertising and marketing can also take advantage of hashtags. Jane Olson of Oxygen Media is interviewed for the article. She said: “It’s a nod to ‘we know you and we live in your world,’ but it’s also a way to get a conversation started in our advertising,” adding, “The other funny thing that’s been happening is that people around the office have started to talk in hashtags—’Hashtag sorry I’m late,’ or ‘Hashtag bad day.’ ” The Times also noted that for this year’s Super Bowl, Audi created a commercial that featured a hashtag—#ProgressIs—on the screen.