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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.
We were using it for IRC way back then, they're called channels.
What was old is new again.
Just because you disagree doesn't mean it's not true.
Because they are a hack. Twitter wasn't designed to include any metadata except author, date, etc. - certainly not topics, tags or keywords.
The problem is feature creep. Of course users want tags and keywords and topics and threading and circles and access levels/restrictions and grouping and two hundred other features. But if you give them what they want, they will complain that it's all too complicated and move elsewhere.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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.