Hashtags and Twitter

One of my friends asked me a thought provoking question this morning.  Paraphrased, she wanted to know why we would use a hashtag on twitter instead of just searching for the term itself.  After all, both are searchable and any search on twitter will produce an RSS feed.  So why do we bother using hashtags?

I think this blog post from SEO presents some good points both for and against using the tags.  The author (Joshua Odmark) sums up: “In conclusion, even though I think twitter hash tags are a dying art, they are not dead yet.”

I checked with some folks in my own twitterverse and they confirmed that they still use hashtags.

Which makes sense.  I think the real benefit to using hashtags is to cut down on noise.  In the examples given by my friend (course comm & sharing, seminar backchatter, and public workshop notes), the hashtag allows you to search on a pre-defined tag.  If you have a term that is rather unique (like “moodle”) then maybe you don’t need it.