What is the followfriday?

You may have noticed on my Twitter timeline that I am frequently using the hashtag #followfriday. Some people are asking my time by time what that is and so I decided to write this little article for a simple reference.

What is a hashtag?

First of all, you need to know what a “hashtag” is. A “tag” is something like a keyword. This is used to describe the most important subject of the message. From blogs and many other content sensitive websites you will know that kind of technology as tagclouds. Have a look at my blog’s sidebar at the part “Tags” to see such a tagcloud.

In Twitter, those tags are called “hashtags”, because the hash sign “#” is written in front of the tag without any spaces.

A good example would be

Michael Jackson really is THE king of pop #MJ

or

Listen to the latest episode called Procession at my audio #podcast http://www.itunes.com/podcast?id=323879840

What is the #followfriday?

Every Friday many people use the hashtag #followfriday to recommend other follow-worth Twitter users. New people to Twitter see them, because of the trending topics which are shown on the Twitter website. They are also found on Twitter when searching for the hashtag #followfriday and are automatically read by your friends following you.

Follow @timpritlove the maker of the great Chaos Radio Express podcast! #followfriday

This helps other people to find other interesting people.