Story behind the hashtag
group of people, who were not connected or following each other, engaged in a discussion about the same topic. That is why the early days of Twitter felt more personal and cozy; your discussions and engagements were exchanged within a very close circle of your friends and those who share same interests as you do. Then came hashtags!
Chris Messina is the first one who introduced hashtags to the platform. Messina worked as a developer and UX designer at Google, before leaving to join the San Francisco based startup NeonMob. “In his Twitter bio, Messina refers to himself as the hashtag godfather,” as reported the Wall Street Journal. Messina did not actually invent the idea of using the “pound” sign to aggregate similar messages or photos under the same topic. The idea was popular on Flicker and Internet Relay Chat and in Jaiku, a Twitter competitor that was later bought by Google.
The real inspiration though was described by Messina himself in a blog post he wrote in 2007 “What’s really interesting, however, ( is) how these channels can be used as tags within Twitter to open up entirely new possibilities. Every time someone uses a channel tag to mark a status, not only do we know something specific about that status, but others can eavesdrop on the context of it and then join in the channel and contribute as well.”
And from that moment on, the word hashtag became connected to Twitter. The use of the new sign grew through time and became more than a topic or news aggregator. It was cultivated into a vital marketing tool and somehow a personality representation of the person or the company that is using it; the hashtag you use or create becomes a part of your online identity that stays on the timeline forever.
Some analysts even claim that what Messina did was the main reason behind the popularity of Twitter. The fan base of the platform grew exponentially since then. The hashtags surrounding sensitive topics and ideas started to influence people and form discussions on other media outlets. Ironically though, Twitter co- founder Evan Williams thought that the idea of hashtags would never fly, he thought the idea was too technical to go mainstream.
The same can be said about Arabic hashtags; they were a critical reason Twitter started to pick up users in the Arab world. Some would argue that, unfortunately, Arabs abused the idea of hashtags; any Arabic hashtag nowadays is filled with spammers but nonetheless, it can’t be denied that it became an important tool in measuring people’s interests.