As promised, I will unveil one of the great mysteries of our time:  why do people use the pound sign in tweets? If you're reading this and you don't know what a tweet is, stop by here first, and then join us again.

Hashtags are the formal term for a unit of characters that begin with the pound sign, ie #iphone or #tednugent.

History: The original purpose of hashtags was to be a tool for searching keywords on twitter. If you followed the username Hashtags (which is symbolized by @Hashtags) and you then used hashtags in your tweets, those tweets would be included in the @hashtags database. So if someone searched #puppy, they would find all of the tweets that I posted about my furry, four-legged monster, if I included #puppy somewhere in the tweet. Any other tweet that used that hashtag would also show up. You still with me?

In reality hashtags make a tweet look cool, but do little else. I see a lot of hashtags like this: #springcantcomesoonenoughandwintersucks or #lookinlikeafoolwithyopantsontheground. Who is that really helping? Are people searching these terms? No. Are the tweeters even following @hashtags or a similar keyword directory? Usually not. Do they make the people who don't understand hashtags feel inferior? I think so. Do they clog up the 140 character tweet limit with jibberish? Most definitely. But, do they add another dimension to tweets that makes it all worth it? You decide.

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