Hashtags, words or phrases preceded by the symbol "#", have been a boon to event planners as a simple tool for following and organizing online discussions around events. They provide a portal through which attendees can easily access media related to the event and a way for them to network online.

Almost as soon as event organizers began to see the value of using hashtags to organize tweets related to an event, applications began to pop up to make the information sharing more user-friendly. Thus, we've seen Twitterfalls, hashtag archivers and tweet curation platforms with varying degrees of adoption by event professionals.

Twitter quietly rolled out a new feature last week called "Who to Follow" which, so far, I am loving! It suggests people you might like to follow based on several factors including who you follow already and who they follow.

(Photo by opticalreflex)

(photo by zoetnet)

Not long ago I wrote a guest blog post for Liz King, of Liz King Events which gave some tips on how to find great people to follow on Twitter.  I thought I would post a link to it today, as it is #FollowFriday.  Please add any ideas you have for finding great connections on Twitter in the comments. 

(photo by lu_lu)

(photo by okapisafari)

Whether you got on Twitter to promote your new company, meet peers or just find out what everyone's talking about, you quickly learned that those with lots of followers, who tweet a lot, talk to people and get retweeted, seem to have influence. You might have even figured out how this type of influence might benefit you and so you've decided to try to get some for yourself.