Hashtag Reference

Search for the origin of a Twitter hashtag – type the tag (without the #) into the search box.

If there are no results, this means that no-one has defined that hashtag to @tagref yet. When you find out what it means, please let @tagref know.

How to add a hashtag to the glossary

Send a message to the tagref Twitter account in the format:

@tagref #hashtag is definition

for example

@tagref #twitpanto is a Twitter pantomime, see http://is.gd/kgSr

About

Aargh, what do all these #hashtags mean?

We created @tagref because we were seeing lots of #hashtags that we didn’t understand, both in our regular contacts’ tweets and in Twitter search‘s ‘Trending topics’.

If you try a simple search for the hashtag alone, it could potentially return thousands of tweets, most of which may not enlighten you as to what it actually means.

Our solution:

When you create a new hashtag, or find an existing one that is undefined, send a tweet to @tagref containing the #hashtag and a definition (and optionally a link to futher info), for example:

@tagref #twitpanto is a Twitter pantomime, see http://is.gd/kgSr

Then users can do a search for “@tagref #hashtag” and it should just return one result containing the definition. If you use the search box at the top of this page, just enter the hashtag (without the #) and we’ll do the rest for you

Any #hashtags that you define to @tagref are now automatically added to Tagalus too.