I recently did a workshop and explained that there are many different way to search for hashtags.  If you do not know what a hashtag is or want to learn more Twitter terminology check out my blog post entitled Twitter Lingo. A hashtag, or “#”, denotes a keyword or topic on Twitter.  It is often the best way to search for and find out what Twitter users are currently talking about.  Hashtags can be any string of characters without spaces.  The most-talked-about Hashtags at any given time are located in the Trends (see “Trends”) sidebar on the right panel of the Twitter home page.

Topsy is a FREE, easy way to search for a certain hashtag.  All you need to do is put the hashtag symbol (#) and whatever you would like to find more information on in the search bar.  If you search #commoncore you will see all of the tweets that included the hashtag commoncore (#commoncore).

All of the tweets with that certain hashtag will show up in the search.  You can search hashtags from the past 1 hour, 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 30 days, or all time.  Another simple but helpful feature of Topsy is the option to create an email alert.  With this alert you can get an email each day with the certain hashtag you want to search. This way you don’t have to go to the Topsy website each day, information can be sent to you.  If you like to follow a certain hashtag, I encourage you to use Topsy and if you are not sure what educational hashtag to follow, Jerry Blumengarten has an excellent page on educational hashtags.