Happy Birthday! #Hashtag celebrates 10 years

Photo credits: Kristofer Cheng for The New York Times

 Hashtag, the symbol attached to keywords to tag topics online on Wednesday celebrates 10 years making social media more useful.

On August 23,2007 (10 years ago)-He sent a tweet asking Twitter users what they thought about adding a pound sign before a topic like "#barcamp"- a popular event among folks in the technology industry.

According to NewYork times, It was “the simplest idea that could work,” Mr. Messina, 36, a product designer from San Francisco, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. It gave people a tool, he added, that would enable them “to participate in a powerful way on social media.”

Today about 125 million hashtags are shared every day, often serving as a springboard to launch massive online campaigns.Hashtags have proven most useful for filtering conversations about events.

In April 2014 the abduction at Chibok in northeastern Nigeria of 276 schoolgirls by Islamists from Boko Haram led to the posting of the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag.

The then US first lady Michelle Obama was among those who used it to draw attention to the fight against Boko Haram, which at the time seemed to have Nigeria’s army on the backfoot.

#BlackLivesMatter was another digital rallying cry, going viral during a wave of protests over the deaths of several black people at the hands of the police in the United States.

Then there was #OccupyWallStreet for the American “indignant” movement that set up a protest camp in the heart of the New York’s Manhattan to protest financial greed and corruption.

Hashtags have also sprung up in the wake of terror attacks to allow internet users to express solidarity for the victims and survivors.

In 2015, #JeSuisCharlie was shared five million times in the two days after the January 7 jihadist attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, which killed 12 people.

#PrayforParis was tweeted more than six million times after the November 2015 attacks in and around Paris which cost 130 lives.

The slogan was adapted elsewhere, for example in Berlin — #PrayforBerlin — after a truck attack left 12 dead at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016.
Humorous hashtags have proved extremely successful. The gaffes of politicians are often mercilessly tagged and lampooned by online critics.

Word games, photos and animated images add to the mix on topics as varied as the weather, celebrities, and major football matches.

A look at the top three hashtags on Twitter last year gives an idea of the kind of subjects capable of going viral.

In the gold medal position was #Rio2016, for coverage of the Rio Olympics. Not just fans but the athletes themselves made free use of the hashtag.

Political hashtags can also take off. #Election2016, for coverage of a more than usually divisive US presidential campaign, was the second most popular hashtag.

It’s quite the shift from the days when Mr. Messina — Twitter user #1186 — considered the possibility of what he called “tag channels” demarcated by “the hash (#) character.”

“I’m super gratified at how many people actually use it for all kinds of purposes,” said Mr. Messina. “It’s giving humanity a way to express themselves — as incoherent as it may be.”