As promised - It was a wild ride

Tonight I ventured into #lrnchat on Twitter.  At first it was slow to begin but, as forewarned, it got pretty wild.  It definitely was a learning experience and stirred more questions than it provided answers.  The topic tonight was, "Keeping Ahead of the Curve".  After people introduce themselves and share what they learned today/this week, various questions are posed and everyone answers at the same time!

From a technical standpoint, it takes some figuring to bring up the ongoing tweets which can jump to 28 in a minute or so.  Scrolling up and down the thread of conversation was "jumpy" and I didn't know if that was normal or unusual or whether it was a problem on my end or theirs.  I finally figured out what to click on to "refresh" the conversation.

Being new to Twitter, some of my questions are: 

1)  Does each user have to manually retype the hashtag "#lrnchat" in the body of their tweet or is there an easier way to add it in?

2)  From time to time, I noticed a few of the questions posed were repeated several times by the participants.  Did they click on "retweet" by accident or....?

What was interesting was the thread that was woven.  Some comments seemed random and I couldn't figure out what the person was saying or responding to.  Sometimes the person's entire tweet was a series of hashtags  and URL's.  Other times, I noticed people responded directly to another person's comment in a brief side conversation and then got back into the mainstream.  Some people commented constantly; others very occasionally or not at all (like me).  Many of the tweeters' personalities definitely emerged (funny, intense, more easy going, etc).  I actually started "following" a few of the tweeters.

I heard about more media tools with which I am unfamiliar (big surprise, ha)  such as Evernote, Pocket, Dolphin, Drive and Flipboard and had no idea what the references to angry birds meant.  Would also be interested to know what are considered "fringe topics".

Definitely an interesting hour.