Twitter's hashtag phenomenon has given us many dimensions with which we can analyze and understand thought in the mob and rabble of real time zeitgeist. At any given time, Twitter has what everyone is willing to share with the world (in 140 characters or less). Hashtags allow us to Tweet a message and attach it to a public stream related to the message. They vary in use. Sometimes they are a noun like #vegas and sometimes a meme like #omgfacts. To the left of this article is #in2010

An Emerging Type

I see a new hashtag type trending this morning. One I haven't seen before. A ranged temporal hashtag. #in2010 is a hashtag that tags meme-space hopes for the next year. A valuable store that will have continued value over time. Why? Because the first rule of capitalism reads "Give Them What They Want". How will you know what people want? They are telling you right now: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23in2010

If I were a Twitter Analysis Company, I would begin a steady archiving of everything coming in on the #in2010 hashtag and treat it as a different type. It does not correlate with the voting/sentiment product data. Why? Because it doesn't represent how people feel about something now. This data is how they want to feel.

I'm going to see what I can whip up to archive it myself. If you are going to archive it as well and are interested in joint examination of the data I would love that. This is a very promising volume, with many interesting use cases and implementations.