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Twitter’s most used feature – Octothorp, which is another term for the symbol ‘#’ – celebrated its 10th anniversary on August 23.
Though the first tweet was sent out by Jack Dorsey, Chief Executive Officer and one of the founders of Twitter, on March 21 2006, it was the Twitter user Chris Messina, who introduced the concept of hashtag on August 23, 2007.
His message on that day read: “how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?”.
In a post on his personal blog – Factory Joe — on October 22, 2007, Messina said that hashtags become even more useful in a time of crisis or emergency as groups can rally around a common term to facilitate tracking. On the need for using hashtag, he explained in the blog post: “It’s like adding metadata to your updates in a simple and consistent way. They’re not the most beautiful things ever, but they’re pretty easy to use.”
Popular symbolIn a Twitter blog post on Wednesday, Biz Stone, one of the co-founders of Twitter, said that hashtag has become one of the most recognisable and widely used symbols of our time.
He said that many iconic features of Twitter have been created over the years by listening and watching what people who use Twitter do with it and then working to make it easier and better for them.
According to Biz Stone, Messina’s proposal was simple, useful, and fun. “Because brevity is essential on Twitter, he (Messina) suggested using the “pound” or “hash” character common on phones (this was pre-iPhone) to create groups of related Tweets. It was an undeniably elegant proposal,” he said.
Since it first appeared on Twitter, the hashtag has dramatically evolved — from grouping tweets, to adding quirky commentary, to sparking social movements and global conversations. Using hashtags on Twitter, people have made this platform their microphone, shaped culture, and changed the world, Biz Stone said.
On Wednesday, Twitter India said that with more than 8 million tweets #IPL is the most tweeted sporting event hashtag, and #Sultan (Salman Khan’s movie from Yash Raj Films) is the most tweeted movie hashtag in India.
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