We all are aware of the famous phenomena of #hashtags; well hashtag just celebrated its 10th birthday a few days ago on Wednesday.
The ‘#’ Hashtag was initiated a decade ago on 23rd August 2007 from Twitter by Chris Messina – an American social media expert and now head of community and growth at an art trading website. The trend then later spread to other platforms like Facebook and Instagram and is now widely used by people all across the world. His initiative has now become so popular that it is being used 125 million times on Twitter alone per day.
Intended to bring a group together, Chris used the hashtag for the first time. He tweeted: “how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?” The tweet marked #barcamp as the first hashtag ever.
how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?
— ?ChrisMessina (@chrismessina) August 23, 2007
Speaking to The Guardian Chris expressed, “It’s thrilling to see how this little idea that came out of a very specific moment in the evolution of the internet took off and has grown into something far bigger than me, bigger than Twitter or Instagram, and that will hopefully maintain its relevance for a long time to come.”
The purpose of creating hashtag was to help organize tweets based on a similar subject like #MondayMotivation or #Hashtag10, in honor of the hashtag’s anniversary.
Which hashtags have mattered most to you? #Hashtag10 pic.twitter.com/WyJvGpZXuR
— Twitter (@Twitter) August 23, 2017
Hashtags like #IceBucketChallenge, #PokemonGo, #BlackLiveMatter and #HeForShe became very popular on various social media websites often making huge and meaningful differences in society. The Huffington Post noted that the most tweeted television show hashtag of all time is #TheWalkingDead and the most tweeted movie hashtag of all time is #StarWars.
Managing director of Twitter Australia, Suzy Nicoletti exclaimed, “When anything happens in the world, it happens on Twitter, and the hashtag is a perfect example of this. The hashtag changed everything — over the past ten years, it has become one of the most widely recognized and used symbols in the world. It created new ways to communicate, to share, and to build communities.”
‘#’ gained further popularity after it was added as a separate word in the dictionary by Merriam Webster in 2014. The word is defined as: A word or phrase preceded by the symbol # that classifies or categorizes the accompanying text (such as a tweet).