When I first started to use Twitter about three years ago, I saw it more as a social tool, a place where I could let people know what I was up to and see what my friends were doing as well. It took me a good five months or so to truly realize how powerful Twitter could actually be and how beneficial it could be for me. I finally understood that it was more than just a place to tell people what I just ate, but it was a way where I could almost instantaneously get news and breaking stories on just about any topic that was going on in the world.
Fast forward a couple of years, and Twitter has continued to evolve. Not just the app itself, but the way that Twitter is used has changed. Take, for example, the hashtag. At first, it was a nice way for us to label tweets as we wrote them. But over time the hashtag has become a powerful way to aggregate tweets and to cut through the noise.
Now, there’s apps built fully around Twitter hashtags, such as Tagboard. Tagboard specializes in this and is able to hone in on making hashtags even more powerful than they already are.
What Does It Do?
The main goal of Tagboard is to search through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and App.net for a specific hashtag that you are looking for and present results for them to you. So, for example, lets say I want to see what others are saying about the Pope resigning. I can type in the word “pope” into the search box and then Tagboard searches through the social networks I mentioned above and shows me the results.
Search results for a specific hashtag
I can then do a variety of things with the results that I get. If it is a tweet, I can choose to reply to the person who created it, retweet or favorite it. The same goes for Instagram and Facebook, where I can “like” or comment on what people are saying. If you get a lot of results you can aggregate them by selecting one of the social networks and seeing results for that specific one.
Options to interact with someone’s tweet on Tagboard
Creating Your Own Board
Not only can you search different hashtags and see their results, but you can also create your own Tagboard. All you have to do is search for a specific hashtag and if no one has already created a board for that topic, then you can do it yourself. You create a title for it as well as a description of what the board represents, a link for it, as well as an image.
Creating my own Tagboard
In my opinion, this now makes Tagboard more than just a place where you can search for hashtags to see what others are talking about. By adding this feature they have now made Tagboard more personal; let me show you what I mean. When my wife takes a picture of our son, she gives it a hashtag called “taylorfeedbomb.” I can search for this and up will come all the pictures and other things that we have given the hashtag to. We can then send the link to my parents and friends who live miles away and they can instantly see updates on our son without us having to upload pics and videos and other updates to a blog or some other image hosting site. That in itself is worth using Tagboard, and there are many other examples that I can think of that can make this app very useful.
Lots of Uses
The more I played around with Tagboard, the more I started to see how useful it could be for a lot of different people. As an educator, the first thing I thought about was that this could be used as a great research tool. Let’s say that I am researching the State of the Union address, Tagboard is a great way to be able to not only get the social perspective, but you can also see what the news outlets are saying as well. It is a great way to stay up to date with current events, not only in politics, but in many other events that happen around the world. Maybe you want to see what people are thinking about the Super Bowl commercials; Tagboard gives you a quick and easy way to do that. Also, like I mentioned before, it is a great way to create personal boards as well that you can use to share with your friends and family.
Final Thoughts
I absolutely love using Tagboard, both from a personal as well as an educator perspective. I think it has so many different uses and as long as hashtags are around and being used, I see no reason to not take advantage of it. Social networking has given us a whole new layer to how we consume the news and read about the world, on top of staying in communication with the people close to us. Never before have we been able to learn almost instantly about an event before the news outlets can break the story. We are living in a world where we can get just about get anything we want, when we want it.
When I was asked to summarize Tagboard, I equated it to Google and instead of searching topics, you are searching hashtags. If you ever wanted to see what others are saying about a specific topic or a way to create personal board with hashtags that you use frequently, I would highly suggest you go and check it out and see what you think.