If you’re not a Twitterer, tweeter, or any other demonym for members of the Twitter community, you probably have no idea what a hashtag is. That’s about to change. Basically, a hashtag is a way for people who use Twitter to categorize their tweets, much like the tags you see at the right of our blog. It uses the pound sign (#) followed by a short phrase with no spaces. Twitter keeps track of the most popular hashtags in real time, so users can see what other people are talking about at any given time (they call this “trending”). Recent news events have inspired trending hashtags like #Oslo and #AmyWinehouse.
Sometimes, people actually use hashtags for this purpose. Sometimes companies use them to keep track of entries to contests they hold on Twitter. Most of the time, people use them to play silly games where you have to come up with something that fits a certain topic. For the past day or so, a hashtag called #bookswithalettermissing has been popular. The idea is pretty simple: delete one letter from the title of a book to come up with a new, humorous title. A lot of people give a brief synopsis of the altered plot, as well.
Here are some of my own contributions (with links to the originals):
Of Mice and Me: The memoirs of Robert Burns (or Walt Disney).
Zorba the Geek: A young man trades his books for computer games.
A Wrinkle in Tim: One man’s memoir of getting older.
One with the Wind: A novel of the Wright Brothers.
Where Angels Fear to Read: Some of the most dangerous libraries in the world.
Around the World in Eight Days: The accelerated version of Jules Verne’s classic
The Lord of the Rigs: Biography of J.D. Rockefeller
The English Patent: A history of British inventions.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sins: A look at the darker side of Tweety Bird.
These are just a few of the ones I’ve come up with. Do you have any of your own? Leave them in the comments, or tweet them to us @friscolibrary!
| Jake Gauslow |
| Adult Services Librarian | |
| jgauslow@friscotexas.gov |
Tags: books, Frisco Public Library, fun, Internet, Twitter
Excellent post!