Twitter Hashtag Abuse and Spam

When using twitter search or searching on twitter you may notice (#).  This symbol is called a hashtag.  What is a hashtag used for?  On twitter a hashtag is used to group tweets together.  For example -- if you are searching for all the tweets about the hubchallenge or hubmob use #hubchallenge or #hubmob.  Every tweet tagged with the hashtag will show in the twitter search results.  Now that you know what a hashtag is, let's go on to hashtag abuse and spam.

Whether you believe hashtag abuse and spam is a twitter problem, blogger issue, or company brand problem is beside the point.  Hashtag abuse and spam is problem, because it hurts the search results.

Did you know that hashtags frequently are in twitter trends?  Well they are.  Twitter trend is a way to show popular tweets and trends in twitter.  You can say - It's what hot in the twitter world.  It works the same way as Google trends.

Here's how not to use the hashtag -- (Classic twitter hashtag abuse and spam).  HabitatUK has been reported as the latest villain.  

Habitat is a UK furniture company.  They jumped onto twitter and started using hashtags the wrong way.  Abuse or spam?  See the below illustration.

The problem with these hashtags are that, Habitat is a furniture company -- why are they using hashtags for (Apple, iPhone, and the like).  Habitat has since deleted the tweets that had misused hashtags on them.