Have you ever wondered where the noble hashtag came from? Those of you who weren’t born with a cell phone surgically grafted to your fore-limbs may remember when it was called the pound sign on the old-fashioned Graham Bell talkies. Then, the quiet and unassuming four lines were taken by the Internet and have now become the worldwide sign for tagging a trend.
Although the pound sign Unicode has been a part of our telephone’s since the early 1900’s, The word “hash” was used for what we know to be the pound sign or number sign within North America across other parts of the world.
The pound sign made its first appearance as the hashtag in August of 2007 and since then has become the popular terminology for the same four lines worldwide. Although the hashtag was first introduced on the popular social media platform, Twitter that same year, it wasn’t officially acknowledged by the social network until two years later.
The “trending topics” that we have come to know was built upon Twitter users using hashtags beginning in 2007, with the hashtag #sandiegofire during the California wildfires that year. However, hashtags may have started on Twitter but they certainly did not end there.
Instagram incorporated linkable hashtags in January of 2011, Google+ in October of that same year, so did Vine and finally Facebook just this year. Hashtags have made it onto our television screens and in advertisements; they have gone farther than first projected.
There is more to the journey of the hashtag, and you can see its rich History within the following infographic of a social media icon offered up by the informative folks over at Offerpop. Learn how this beloved symbol has changed our social culture and turned a pound sign into what we know as the continuously growing hashtag.
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+Erin Ryan is the Director of Social Media for Wikimotive and a writer for various Social Media & Tech blogs. Erin has a keen understanding of the power of Social Media for business and fervently stays up-to-date.
Connect further on Erin Ryan’s Social Networks through her About.me Profile.