Hash - Not Just for Breakfast

If you look at the Trending on Google+ list much, you'll notice that there are often a lot of trends that start with a tic-tac-toe sign. This symbol, sometimes called a pound or a hash mark, is used by Google+ users for a lot of different reasons. Let's take a look at how it is used, why you may want to use them, and what you need to do.

The hashtag was borrowed from Twitter, where people used it to discuss similar topics. As such, it created ad-hoc communities, and people would follow streams of these hashtags instead of needing to follow specific people. Google+ encourages this use of hashtags as well - searching for a hashtag will take you to posts that have this hashtag, and posting from that stream will automatically append the hashtag to your post as well, so future searches will also return your post.

This isn't as necessary with Google+, however, since posting to pages or shared circles can sometimes accomplish the same goal.  Even searches don't need the hashtag - you can just use normal words to describe your post and the power of Google search will index it correctly, but many people still use hashtags to help categorize their posts.

You will also see many themes that are posted with the same hashtag, and these themes will tend to trend. For example, a lot of people post cat pictures and jokes on Saturday, and these will get tagged with the hash #Caturday.

Using a hashtag is easy - while you are writing your post, in the body of the post itself, type a # mark, and then start typing the hashtag you want to use. A hashtag cannot have any spaces in it, so if you are using more than one word, run them all together. Many people capitalize the first letter of each word to make it easier to read. As you're typing, Google may suggest some other hashtags that match yours - feel free to select one of them, but they will be all in lower case.

You can add as many hashtags to your message as you like. If you are adding a lot, however, it is usually good form to put them at the bottom of your post, so they don't make the post itself difficult to read.

Don't overuse hashtags, however. Many people (myself included) don't like them, since they may clutter up a post. It can also be difficult to make sure you find the right hashtags to use - for example, should you tag your posts about the olympics with #Olympics, or #Olympics2012, or #London2012 or #LondonOlympics, or... So if you're going to use hashtags, be selective in how you use them. Remember that you don't need a hashtag to find a post later - Google indexes every word of your post, so you don't need to talk about the Olympics, and gold medals, and perhaps your favorite sport, and then have to apply a hashtag for each one as well.

Hashtags are an easy to use tool in Google+, and if not overused, can make following selected themes and topics a lot easier. So go ahead, have some hash with your Plus.