Ten years ago today, an entrepreneur named Chris Messina tweeted "#barcamp" - and the Twitter hashtag was born.
Since then, the hashtag has evolved to be part of our everyday language.
People use the symbol to contribute to discussions, follow world events, and let the world know where they're tweeting from. According to Twitter, there are an average of 125 million hashtags tweeted everyday.
The use of hashtags has grown up considerably in the last ten years. In 2007, the most tweeted hashtag was used around 9,000 times. This year, the most popular hashtag has been used over 300 million times.
Some of the most popular hashtags have ushered in an entire lexicon of phrases. #ThrowbackThursday has been tweeted 120 million times, and people have showed off a #ootds, or "outfit of the day," over 2 million times.
Hashtags get even more mileage during big award shows, when people watch together and weigh in on the results on Twitter. Together, #MTVHottest, #MTVStars, #KCA, #iHeartAwards, and #BestFanArmy have been used over 3 billion times.
People also love to tweet about their favorite TV shows. Twitter says the most tweeted TV show of all time is "The Walking Dead" (#TheWalkingDead), although we like to think "Game of Thrones" (#GOT) will soon lap it.
In celebration of its birthday, Twitter created a 24-hour custom emoji. To check it out just tweet #Hashtag10.
Happy birthday #!
how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?
- ⌗ChrisMessina (@chrismessina) August 23, 2007