The Real Hashtag usage

I have had a Twitter account for about a year now and I love it.  I never thought that I would grow to like it as much as I have.  I originally got an account because of my friends nagging me all the time to do it.  I'm so glad they did.  But when I tweet I use hashtags to display emotions or even just funny sayings that I know my friends will appreciate.  Now I know their real use.  In Real-Time Marketing in chapter 6 it explains that hashtags are actually supposed to be used as a way for the media to look up a breaking news topic.  For instance a there is a fire in your local town.  If you begin tweeting about it you could put #Adafire as your tag at the end of your tweet and people researching the story could see what others were tweeting by looking up the hashtag! This is really cool to me.  I knew that hashtags were a way to see what was trending on twitter but I had no idea that you could search tweets by these labels.  I feel so informed and a whole new part of Twitter has been opened up to me.  This makes me love Twitter even more. Procrastination here I come!