Why when someone updates their status, via Twitter, there's #?

[Josephine]

[forculate]

its short codes

[foundawhistle-]

It turns the word into a topic, you know at the side it shows Trending Topics? That's what the # means. So if you're mentioning a band, you'd write it as e.g #paramore to make it a clickable topic.
When someone clicks it, it brings them to a timeline full of tweets that included that topic.

It also can serve as a tag; if someone writes something about food, their tag might be something like #foodtweet. Or if you want to include something else that's not relevant to the tweet, such as

"watching tv with hot chocolate and hobnobs #imsofat"

That isn't really the full purpose of the # symbol though, it's just sort of become that purpose from the people using twitter.




So, as an example using both these purposes:

"Watching #HoganKnowsBest with the dog and hobnobs and tea, might have a nap soon. #livingthedream



haha it's sort of hard to explain, but hope this helps!