I never knew this and to be honest, I never really thought to wonder how the hashtag came to be. Chris Messina is credited with the invention and is self-proclaimed to be the "hashtag godfather". In 2007, Messina, a developer and UX designer at Google, posed in a tweet, “how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?”
While the concept of the hashtag has roots in Internet Relay Chat, where groups and topics were labeled and belonged to a channel, Messina's inspiration was to have a better eavesdropping experience on Twitter so that people can have better context surrounding a specific topic and then join the conversation and contribute.
Messina even mocked up how the hashtag could be used and pitched the idea to Twitter and the idea was turned down. Twitter thought that it would never catch on, rationalizing that "hashtags are for nerds."
To promote the use of the hashtag, Messina even sent private messages to a reporter covering the San Diego fire in 2007, to use #sandiegofire. This was an example of how journalism promoted the use of the hashtag.
Today, the hashtag is not only used in Twitter, but also Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Tumblr, Flickr, Vine and other social networking destinations. The hashtag has helped broadened reach for companies to advertise, however sometimes with unintended negative effects as well. For example, McDonald's created a hashtag for customers to write about positive experiences, but it ended up becoming a place for complaints. In class, it was noted that the best way to get customer service attention is to tweet a complaint. It's pretty incredible the way that the hashtag has developed and evolved and now plays versatile roles from social messaging to social analytics.
Source:
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/10/03/how-twitters-hashtag-came-to-be/
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