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ONE HAS LATELY heard much of the hashtag. That is, the Twitter symbol #, used to categorize a tweet. Charlie Sheen's first tweet, for example, was famously: "Winning ..! Choose your Vice... #winning #chooseyourvice." #Winning has gone on to live in irony across the Twitterverse, in mockery of the eternally less-than-winning Sheen. But even President Obama recently urged students to tweet their senators about raising the interest rates on federally subsidized student loans with the hashtag "#DontDoubleMyRate." The new thing, however, is using the word "hashtag" in conversation. Especially if you are under a certain age, you may be catching people saying things like, "I ran into that guy I met-hashtag happy!" or, in response to someone complaining, "My flashlight app isn't working," perhaps you have heard the retort, "Hashtag First World problems!" A college student not long ago reported a favorite witticism to be appending observations with: "Hashtag did that just happen?

The death toll in Egypt so far is over 300, with thousands wounded. Way to jump on a trending #hashtag to push your products, Kenneth Cole.

Oh, and in case you missed it, there is already a parody Kenneth Cole PR Twitter account at http://twitter.com/KennethColePR Hours after its creation, it already has 3,633 followers. Electric speed indeed.

Also of interest: http://twitter.com/#!/dacort/status/33303368441004033 Damon Cortesi posted a screenshot of the KC fan page activity.

Over the past day, Al Jazeera has pushed the issue with its promoted trend and tweets like this, which reads "Like our coverage from #Egypt? Think we should be shown on US TV? It's time to #DemandAlJazeera http://aje.me/demandAJ." Yesterday, clothing outlet Kenneth Cole tried to leverage the popularity of Egypt-related hashtags in a similar manner, tweeting "Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo." Immediately, the company caught a lot of flack for the tweet and shortly after publicly apologized and pulled the tweet. The difference in the two situations, we would think, is that Al Jazeera is trying to leverage the popularity of a specific event to gain entry into a market that has essentially shut it out. The end result might be similar to Kenneth Coles' desired outcome - increased sales - but it would come with the increased spread of information.

The White House began their "office hours" today at 2 p.m. EST. They asked Twitter followers to submit questions about the debt debate using the hashtag #WHChat. As their last response, they took the opportunity to play the internet's oldest practical joke on a user (and catching the rest of us in the wake).