It’s occurring to me that I’ve done a pretty thorough job telling you what you need to know when I make a recommendation, and I’m pretty proud of that. In addition to telling you whom to follow, I tell you where to follow those people (Twitter, Facebook, G+, their articles, podcasts, and websites, etc.), why to follow those people (because they provide value and fit the arbitrary theme of the week), and when to follow those people (immediately), but I don’t really delve into the “what” to follow—because that doesn’t apply in those cases.

But is there no value to following a “what”? I think I can make the case that there are some nonpersons you need to be apprised of if you’re going to get the most out of your Magic social-media experience. This week, instead of pretending I’m not going to focus on Twitter because I don’t want this pigeonholed as a “Twitter” article, I’m going to abandon the pretense and focus on a “what” on Twitter I think you should follow.

Let’s talk about hash tags.

Hash tags are a blight upon the earth in every other context. I have been known to defriend people on Facebook for the transgression of using a hash tag on Facebook unironically, and I’ve continued this policy even after Facebook made the hash tags functional. It’s how I roll. However, in the context of Twitter, hash tags are used for something other than douchebaggery and can be incredibly useful. I check a few of them frequently, and I would be remiss if I didn’t highlight a few for you. Without further preamble, I present “Who to Follow – What to Follow Edition.”

#MTGFinance

If you want to make a decent amount of money at MTG finance, you need to be all-in. Writing articles helps, speculating is a big part of it, having an eBay or TCGplayer store and possibly a brick-and-mortar is crucial, and reading tons and tons of articles is important. If you’re deep in finance, you need to be really deep, and most of what is posted on the #MTGFinance tag will be stuff you know already.

If you don’t want to make money but don’t like overpaying for cards, buying cards and watching their values plummet, buying cards after a spike, or losing most of the value of your collection each rotation, this hash tag is valuable. You are going to receive an early warning regarding stuff that is going to happen soon. People who checked the #MTGFinance were warned about Master of Waves spiking and about True-Name Nemesis being insane in Legacy and Vintage and everything in between. If you take a minute a day to see what is trending, you may save yourself some money, stay ahead of slow trends, and benefit from people who read finance articles, sharing what they paid to read.

David’s articles are behind the paywall on QuietSpeculation. Now you know that people have paid for this tip, and you know it for free. Should you buy foil Steel Sabotage? Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, now you know something in three seconds that someone had to read an article he or she paid have access to. Free info like this is everywhere because people love to post it on Twitter for some reason.

Twitter user @MTGStocks gives you a nice snapshot of big winners and losers every day, too, and if you can’t budget three seconds to potentially make or save yourself some money, you need a vacation.

Checking this hash tag once a day or even once a week is a great way to see a snapshot of the most salient MTG finance information, and it’s the easiest way to stay ahead of price trends that may have big financial implications for players and collectors. And it’s free.

#SCG (City)

This past weekend, there was a StarCityGames Open in Los Angeles. I was paying attention to a lot of coverage between the Open, Eternal Weekend, and the Standard Grand Prix in Santiago. Since I was trying to gauge whether the hype around True-Name Nemesis was real or imaginary, I mostly watched the Eternal Weekend coverage, but I had to keep an eye on the emerging B/R deck with Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch as well to see if it was time to buy in. Between all that, I didn’t have much of an ability to keep an eye on coverage for the SCG Open. That is where the hash tag came in handy. Anything relevant was likely to wind up there. While there is garbage to sort through, it’s much easier to ignore a few worthless tweets than it is to stay glued to coverage all day. Whenever there is an SCG Open, you should check the hash tag every day.

Sometimes, people catch stuff most miss.

And, sometimes, they didn’t miss it at all.

You may find things you wouldn’t even have been able to dig up for yourself.

If you don’t have all day to watch coverage and want to know what’s hot and what’s not, this gives a pretty accurate snapshot and is a great resource.

And it might save the day.

#InVintage

No matter who you are, you have to admit Vintage is awesome. It’s amazing to watch so many thousands of dollars of cards slung around the table and see crazy cards such as Slash Panther, Hypersonic Dragon, and Nightveil Specter that are only good in that format. It’s not the dead-on-turn-one format some say it is. It’s an incredibly diverse format, and it’s a one of the best reasons to preserve Magic’s history and tradition.

Vintage players are so keen to play this format that they will travel many miles to play at unsanctioned, store-level events because they love to play the format so much. They have become incredibly adept at ferreting out and inviting others to play these events. Have you ever wanted to watch or participate in a Vintage event near you? Have you ever wanted to have a quick glance of new tech in that format? Do you want to watch them foam at the mouth when you talk about repealing the reserved list? (That also works on me, as we found out last week.) Look no further than this hash tag.

Eternal Weekend was a huge success, and the hash tag got a lot of mileage as a result.

There are handy guides to the format.

Dying format? What do we say to people who call this a dying format?

Not today.

That does it for me this week. Join me next time, when I’ll be finding you even more value. Thank you for reading, and we’ll see you later.