Get #Healthy with SparkPeople Mobile Hashtags

By , Elizabeth Lowry, Staff Writer
When you’ve taken steps toward living a healthier lifestyle, it’s natural to want to connect with the health and fitness community. After all, who better to motivate and educate you than the people who are working hard to accomplish their own goals? Actively engaging with the SparkPeople community means you’ll have access to insider information from people just like you. Obtaining that information should as easy as targeting a topic or group without having to search through every chat to find the specific phrase that's piqued your interest. We think so, too
 
Now you can search topics and discover other like-minded members in an instant with new hashtag notifications available on our mobile chat. The benefits of using hashtags are endless--find your morning #motivation, hook up with your #cleaneating crew or even push the #panicbutton for help and guidance along the way.
 
If you don’t have the app yet, download it by clicking on one of the links below:

Did you get it? Good. Now that you have our newest version of the app, let's talk hashtags. Once you use a hashtag in mobile chat, it becomes a clickable link. Click on any hashtag and you'll be directed to a page where you'll see a series of posts around that topic in sequential order. "What's going on with my allergies?" now becomes, "What's going on with my #allergies?" Then, if someone else has a similar question, he or she is able to simply search #allergies to discover every chat related to that topic. It’s a world of first-hand experience and opinions, right at your fingertips.

To find the hashtags that are being used now, scroll down to the "Mobile Chat" section of the main screen on our app. (Or you can click the sparkburst at the bottom and select the "Chat" option--whichever is easier for you.) Once you're in the mobile chat section, you'll see a series of hashtags at the top in blue; click on any of these to see conversations that have that particular hashtag in it. 

And here's one more tidbit that might help: When you go to the "Chat" section in your app, you'll now see four options at the top of the screen: "All," "Trending," "Topics" and "My Chats." Every time you go to that screen, you'll start on the "All" tab, which will show you all mobile chats in our community, from the newest to the oldest. But if you click on the "Trending" tab, you'll see which hashtags are being used the most right now--this is a great way to find out what has people excited the most in the app. Under the "Topics" tab, you'll find the hashtags that are usually used the most--for topics such as #exercise, #lowcarb and #recipes. This is a great place to check out if you're just getting started with hashtags and want to see what they're all about. For those of you who are already familiar with groups and SparkTeams on our website, this is a similar way to group conversations around a specific topic!

And the "My Chats" tab? We'll let you figure that one out. :D
 
We hope you like this change as much as we do! We can't wait to hear what topics interest you, and to watch our mobile community come together in new and exciting ways to live healthier, happier lives, one hashtag at a time!