Inside Jimmy Fallon's Twitter hashtag game

By Cory Bergman 

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon features one of the most popular Twitter-powered segments in TV: a hashtag game that turns viewers into contributors. Every week, Fallon mentions a hashtag on the air (like #ScrewValentinesDay), which sparks a flood of tweets with one-liners for the theme. Like this one:

After people tweet, many tune in the next night to see if Fallon’s team picked it to read on the air (they’re also featured on a blog, with honorable mentions). For the show, it’s free jokes. For the audience, a great way to participate. Often, Fallon hashtags become trending topics, providing free social promotion for the show. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Fallon has 3.1 million Twitter followers, either.

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At the TVNext conference earlier this month, Fallon put together a behind-the-scenes video (above) that explains how the show picks hashtags and tweets to read on the air. Decidedly low-tech, but as Twitter’s Robin Sloan says about the hashtag segment, “it’s creativity, not technology, that makes this stuff work.”

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