A printer's trick to save time and space has been transformed into an efficient means of communication, and of marketing and consumption. Here is the story of the events that brought us from a Latin term to a symbol of revolution and change.
Creation of symbol: the "hashtag" started out as an abbreviation for the Roman term libra pondo or "pound weight". We use a period (.) to indicate abbreviations today, printers in those days used a horizontal bar to make it into a single character.
The symbol is placed on the push-button telephone key pad because of the hope to use the dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) phone to access computers.
Based on the use of the symbol to group topics of discussion on Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Chris Messina suggested using # for better organization.
The hashtag makes its first entrances onto the social media during the San Diego brush fires during the fall of 2007.
Twitter begins to link anything with # preceded by it.
Marketers and advertisers begin to take note of hashtags and begin applying metrics to them.
Hashtags on Instagram. 13-yr-old girls around the world rejoice!
Twitter and hashtags are important in disseminating information during the Arab Spring. #Bahrain is on of the most used tags of all time.
Audi uses the first hashtag in a commercial, AND Kenny G!
Jimmy Fallon, Justin Timberlake, and ?love bring the hashtag to mainstream (North) America.
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