Hashtags To Be Registered Like Domain Names?

Here’s a thought: hashtags which can be frustrating to find, understand and keep together should be registered just like domain names.

• Conversations and groups could attach to an official hashtag, links to websites created.
• Standardised hashtags would reduce clutter (multiple hashtags on one topic).
• Confusion over semantics would be reduced, faster access/understanding of conversations increased.
• Purchasing a hashtag would increase the value for the owner of the hashtag.

How could this be a bad thing?

Twitter Moderators: Better Twitter Value At Your Next Conference

One of the most annoying things about using hashtags on Twitter is that there is no way to ensure that people are using the ‘right’ hashtag for your event or conference. HashDictionary - the hashtag dictionary, can help with what the hashtag means but what if you have 1000 people at a conference, only 10 people know about the official hashtag and there are five or six other hashtags being used? Employ the use of Twitter moderators.

Twitter Moderators

I first came upon the idea of Twitter moderators when interacting with @FiBendall and others at the Ad:Tech conference in Sydney. Fi and some other well known tweeple had been pulled in to broadcast and organise the Tweet stream out of the conference. They would setup relevant hashtags, tweet about what was happening at the conference and were promoted at the conference as Twitter moderators.

The Benefits of Twitter Moderators

Obviously people are free to tweet what they want while at an event or conference and will continue to do so without the help or interference of Twitter Moderators. Benefits of using Twitter moderators include:

• Assisting with a more centralised discussion point for specific topics
• Helping control ‘hashtag spread’ and the dilution of conversation
• Having a specific task to perform, their consistency and focus can raise the value of the tweets to those listening in
• Being able to cover several speakers and rooms at once with several moderators
• Pre-emptively organising and defining official hashtags on HashDictionary to get the official hashtag moving

Have you used Twitter moderators at your event or conference? What benefits or drawbacks have you found with this method?

HashDictionary.com - a Dictionary For Hashtags

Today I quietly launched a website called HashDictionary.com. It’s a website I thought of a while ago, but in a different form. The premise of the site is to help people understand what hashtags mean what. So a not so easy to understand hashtag like #beercupsnake can be easily understood with a simple link to the relevant page.

Users can create and edit pages to add new content or to update/remove old content. I intend this to be a useful website for people on Twitter and to help that question “What does #X mean?” get answered so much faster.

I’d love any feedback on the site, is it useful? Is it valuable to you? How can it be improved?