Slashdot Mirror
How a Wildfire Helped Spread the Hashtag
An anonymous reader writes: Chris Messina is credited with originating the use of hashtags at Twitter. What's not widely known is the role of San Diego's wildfires in making hashtags reach a tipping point. Messina, who was Twitter user 1,186, says in the fall of 2007, Web developer Nate Ritter started posting updates on the firestorms using the hashtag #sandiegofire. Other users, including the news media, glommed onto the handle and citizen journalism took a big step forward. From there, other world events and use cases (e.g., Instagram) would lead Twitter to make hashtags more searchable.
Why not an octothorpetag.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Shhh. Don't let the secret out. Our entire 'digital economy' consists of re-implementing concepts from 1975-1995(approximately) either on mobile phones, in HTML/JS, or both, and then snorting the VC money. We can't let them know that.
Man, you geeks are always making this difficult. Just solve it the easy way: Don't give all the users all the features they want, that would confuse them(as you said). Just give all the users all the features that I want. Much less confusing, and I'm happy!