Are Hashtags Dangerous?

Maybe hashtags are more trouble than they're worth. There was a recent Twitter controversy in Indianapolis surrounding the protestors that were arrested for blocking traffic on Sunday night, and the Indianapolis newspaper had contacted me to see what I thought about it. You can read more about the situation here (http://www.indystar.com/story/news/crime/2014/12/05/critics-condemn-impd-wecanbreathe-tweet/19941857/), but in general, I've noticed that in a lot of cases when Twitter goes bad, its' because of the hashtag. It could be a simple typo or misunderstanding, or it could be a larger case of misused newsjacking. We're addicted to speed and brevity now, but Twitter is already a short form social network site. Hashtags are like a shortcut within a shortcut. We need to be conscious of this and be extremely careful about how and when we use hashtags to avoid these kinds of issues. SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/jaybaer00 SPROUT SOCIAL SHOUT OUT Today's Sprout Social shout out goes to Mitch Joel (http://twitter.com/mitchjoel), a legendary digital marketing and one of the original marketing podcasters. His show, Six Pixels of Separation is worth checking out today - http://www.twistimage.com/tag/podcast OUR SPONSORS Candidio (http://candidio.com), a simple and affordable video production company. Follow @candidio on Twitter. Sprout Social (http://sproutsocial.com), a social media management and analytics company that Jay uses for much of his social media every day. Follow @sproutsocial on Twitter. ABOUT JAY TODAY Jay Today is a video podcast with 3-minute lessons and commentary on business, social media and digital marketing from New York Times best-selling author and venture capitalist Jay Baer. Join Jay daily for insights on trends, quick tips, observations and inspiration at http://bit.ly/JayToday.