Twitter Basics: What the heck is a tag? What is this #bbloggers thing?

What's this #bbloggers thing?
Why is my timeline full of people ending their tweets with the #bbloggers word?

*** UPDATE 29 August 2011 ***

#Bbloggers is now organised by Lily from BeautysBadHabit. For further information on past, present and future topics, please click here or simply tweet @beautysbadhabit

#Bbloggers is a twitter HASHTAG (or frequently abbreviated to just TAG) created by Fee from MakeupSavvy.   “Hashtags are a powerful tool that allows Twitter users to track what many people (especially people whom you  aren’t already following) are reporting or thinking about a particular topic or event” * For example, if you live  in the UK, you will have seen many twitter users appending their tweets with #theapprentice or #bgt when the  popular tv programmes The Apprentice and Britain's Got Talent (shortened to BGT) are on TV. Whether you should subject all  your followers with your running commentary of the programme on twitter is another debate (and one which I am not  getting into today) but it remains that using a tag when tweeting about a particular event or topic is very handy for 2 main reasons:

1. Your followers are automatically able to understand that 'Did Amanda had a date with David Dickinson last  night' would refer to Amanda Holden (from Britain’s Got Talent) and a heavy hand with the St Tropez
2. You can meet some new people talking about the same topic/event, have a laugh and perhaps follow them as  result.
   
   
   So what's #bbloggers then? What does it stand for?

#BBloggers is a twitter tag created by Fee from MakeupSavvy to track a chat about blogging, where bloggers from  all over the world, are invited to talk about their blogs. {please read Fee's introductory post here}  

#Bbloggers  stand for Beauty Bloggers, with originally having Beauty Bloggers in mind, but it is open to all bloggers,  regarding the topic they are blogging about, their experience of blogging, whether they have started blogging 2  minutes ago, or been at it for years.

#Bbloggers is a weekly 1-hour twitter chat (every Sunday, 8.00 to 9.00pm  GMT) but the chat always run for an hour, with sometimes the most gobby ones talking till midnight! The chat has  proven to be very popular and around 2000 tweets are exchanged during the hour, which leaves me on to the next point.


How to take part in #bbloggers?
The same way as you would append your tweets with #americanidol, for example when talking about the programme American  Idol (I am not obsessed with reality or talent shows or anything) you just need to include the #bbloggers tag when taking in the part in the conversation, and everybody  following the #bbloggers feed, whether they follow you or not, will be able to see your contributions to the  chat, be able to reply to you etc.


How do you follow the #bbloggers chat feed?

• Tweetdeck users: If you have Tweetdeck, following a hashtag couldn't be any easier. You create and save a new 'search' column.  Type in the tag #bbloggers as the search criteria, and the column will appear alongside all your existing ones,  showing all the latest tweets tweeted using that hashtag. The column will automatically update itself. If you  enable the 'live stream' feature, you're in for a fast paced ride. Try it sometime ;)

• Web Twitter users: 1. Go to Twitter Search.
  2. Type in the expression #bbloggers in the search query. (It might better to open the search page in a different  browser tab/window so that you can still see your mentions/replies and main feed as normal
  3. Refresh the page periodically to see the latest results
  4. Fasten your seat belts as the chat has proven to be popular and is quite fast.

 

Humourous Tags or tags used in a joke context


 
 I couldn’t end this post without mentioning the non serious jokey tags. It’s not to everyone’s taste but I like them. Tags like #thingsyoudowhenyourebored or other ‘fake’ tags which people invent are not meant to track a conversation. Well you can’t try searching for occurences of #thingsyoudowhenyourebored and other out of the blue made-up tags but I don’t think you’ll get very far.


* Credit: I hope Amy Gahran will forgive me to relying heavily on her article for the clear and straightforward instructions on how to follow a twitter tag.
Why this post? I’m covering for Fee (MakeupSavvy) and opening the proceedings of #Bbloggers Chat tonight. As there any many new people joining the chat every week, I wanted to have a little something ready to explain the basics.  I am not a twitter expert by any means but I have tweeted *cough*a fair few times and have learnt a few things along the way.
@tsunimee xx