Learn English: 5 social media words explained

Do you know what's trending online? Have you ever posted something that's gone viral? Let’s take a closer look at some common words used to talk about social media.

What’s trending?
The word ‘trending’ refers to a measure of popularity. If a word or topic is 'trending' it is being talked about on social media.

‘Pictures of cute cats are trending online right now!’

‘News of his engagement is trending on Facebook.’

‘The hashtag #epicfail is so popular with social media users that it is always trending.’

‘It has gone viral’
When something is widely shared on the internet and quickly becomes popular, we can say it has 'gone viral’.

Videos, pictures or posts 'go viral' when many people like and share them. This comes from the idea that popular pieces of information are spread as quickly as an infectious disease, or virus, like the common cold.

‘The video of my dog doing tricks has gone viral.’

‘His speech on equality was so moving, it went viral.’

‘My friend’s post on how she became a successful entrepreneur went viral because it was so inspirational.’

What is a hashtag?
A ‘hashtag’ is the '#' symbol on your keyboard. In the social media world, hashtags are used to describe the general topic of a tweet or post.

For example:

Or when there are major events people are talking about:

#IWD2016 (International Women’s Day 2016)

#rio2016 (Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics)

Hashtags may be useful as when you search for a particular topic or event you can find all social media posts related to it, and see how others are responding.

Initially used on Twitter, hashtags are becoming more popular on Facebook and Instagram as well.

How do I write a tweet?
A 'tweet' is a message you write on Twitter. It is limited to 140 characters so it is quite a short message which has to be clear and concise.

If you wanted to describe yourself in a tweet, here's how you could summarise a paragraph into 140 characters.

If we were to write a proper introduction, we would say:

'Hi I’m Allison. I have been an English teacher for the last 10 years. I live in Australia. I love English grammar. I also love cats. I am an avid traveller. I will be making my first visit to India next month and I am very excited.'

But to tweet this information in just 140 characters you could say:

'Hi I’m Allison, #English teacher for 10yrs, live in #Australia. Love #grammar, #cats, travelling. 1st visit to #India next mth. V excited!'

Due to the character limit, we tend to shorten words and use symbols or slang. So instead of writing ‘first’, we might use ‘1st’, and instead of the word ‘month’, we shorten it to ‘mth’.

For example 'v excited!' is a short form for 'I am very excited,' and we use the exclamation mark to add emphasis.

‘I posted something on your wall’
If your friend loves watching videos of cute animals and you see a video that he might like, then you may ‘post the video on his wall’.

‘Wall’ is a term used to refer to the area on someone's Facebook page where friends or fans can post comments, questions and photos.

We can either ‘post’ or ‘write’ on someone’s wall.

‘I posted some information regarding English courses on your wall.’

‘I wrote on Learn English’s wall asking how to overcome my fear of speaking English. I received so many messages of support from everyone.’