Twitter Going Hollywood With #Fringe and #DoctorWho Hashtags

Twitter has been around for 5 years or so now and for many of those 5 years it has been a place where geeks primarily hung out. Then the likes of Ashton Kutcher made it cool and from there the service hasn't looked back, now boasting millions of members.

Obviously business and Hollywood have noticed with many now having some presence on that hugely popular social medium often advertising their Twitter handles everywhere possible. What is new, at least I hadn't seen it before, is what I noticed last night on the Fox TV show Fringe and all day today on the BBC America show Doctor Who during their marathon leading up to the season premiere. Both had Twitter specific hashtags posted prominently on the screen near the now all too familiar station identification "bug".

For those unfamiliar with the hashtag concept on Twitter, a hashtag is a keyword or phrase (without spaces) beginning with the "#" symbol and is added to tweets so that others can easily search for and follow certain topics. For instance last night one searching using the #Fringe hashtag would have been taken to a page containing all the tweets using the tag specifically advertised during the Fringe broadcast allowing you to join in or watch others talk about the show while it was on. Social media at its finest.

The question I have though is this additional distraction so visibly displayed on our valuable TV real estate too much or is it the wave of the future that will become just another thing we ignore while watching our favorite shows? I'm leaning towards the latter but I guess we will see.

By the way speaking of Twitter, feel free to follow me @GreatPlainsTech