🐦Twitter's Hashtag Marks 🔟 Years🎉

Ten years ago, the Twitter hashtag was born with a very simple tweet by @chrismessina: how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?

Organizing tweets around topics was nearly impossible when Twitter first launched in March 2006. Twitter was merely a stream of thoughts and random musings.

The suggestion to actually have group conversations using the # symbol came from Chris Messina, a Silicon Valley product and design guy who created the hashtag idea for Twitter.

Fast-forward 10 years and 125 million hashtags are now shared every day on Twitter. The hashtag has been adopted by Facebook and Instagram and has rooted itself into American popular culture.

And while Twitter is celebrating today by promoting the rise of popular, non-political hashtags like #FollowFriday, #NowPlaying and #ThrowbackThursday, the hashtag’s most meaningful contribution in the U.S. and abroad has been its ability to rally the internet around more serious ideas and issues.

So #happybirthdaytwitterhashtag. We don’t know what we’d do without you.

UCJ, UNILORIN.