If you ever doubted the power of Social Media, recent happenings must have made you a believer. One of the most powerful social media popularity tool surprisingly, is the hashtag (#). Made popular by Twitter, the hashtag(#) enables you to search keywords on matters of interest. Now, the # is a search and visibility tool on almost all social media networks.
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| Some tweet results from the search #Ferguson |
The inspiration for this article was a placard carried by a protester in Ferguson, a town where an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, was shot and killed by the police on August 9.
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| The Placard hit home |
Ever since, tensions have escalated. Protesters have taken to the streets for nine consecutive nights. Reporters and protesters have been teargassed, threatened and some arrested. One thing however unifies the unrest and protests, the hashtag #Ferguson.
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| HuffingtonPost’s Ryan J. Reilly reportage of the unrest has made him one of the top “to-go-guys”on twitter for #Ferguson Updates. |
One cannot help but agree with the placard “You are one bullet away from being a hashtag“. Mike Brown’s life has been reduced to and is curated by a hashtag. #BringbackourGirls, the biggest and most used hashtag in the history of hashtags was started by one person till it became a global movement. It takes only one tweet with the right hashtag to make an issue get more prominence and of course, there will always be people who will use the #s and the situations for their selfish gains.
Like all things, what are the pros and the cons of the hashtag? After the #s what next? Can we solve all problems with it? How is the hashtag going to define the future in a world that promises to get even more digital?