#itiseverywhereIt seems like suddenly one day the world woke up and decided to reinvent the # tag (otherwise known as an octothorp). At first, I was perplexed by this trend, but soon joined in on the hashtaggery. I had just accepted it as one of those bizarre internet trends such as "memes" or the various text characters that at times appear in YouTube comments fighting for life and death causes. To be honest, I never thought it would stick around, or become as popular as it has. So, this oddity has left me wondering, just how did this whole # tag situation get started?
Well, recently I learned #taging came about when -supposedly against the will of “Twitter bosses”- Chris Messina hash tagged the first ever “#barcamp.” He was -so it is said- inspired by the number sign used to label groups and topics in IRC networks and went on to propose “a similar system to be used on Twitter to tag topics of interest on the microblogging network.” While at first it didn't catch on too well, after the Iranian election protests in 2009 it became common practice in twitter posts. Due to this, Twitter on July 2nd of 2009 began to hyperlink all hashtags in tweets to Twitter search results for the hashtagged word lending to the growth of popularity.
In 2012, McDonald's launched their campaign #McDstories to garner positive feed back from their customers. However, probably much to McD's dismay, they instead received numerous complaints about their service and wisely decided to step away from the hashtagging trend. Though, after this event it seemed as if hashtagging became even more notorious as people then began using it as a form of complaint, protest, sarcasm, and to just over all express what they might be feeling that day.
Fascinating, right? So, now I am left wondering how the octothorp feels about this whole situation. After all, it must have been hard being suddenly thrust into the spotlight like that and now being forced to express and connect causes that he perhaps doesn't agree with. What's more, he has always been more of a numbers guy and was only expected to show up on occasion. Hmm..What about the rest of you out there? How do you feel about #taging?
That McDonald campaign to receive positive feedback really turned out wrong, but how could they not expect that it's the internet. I actually like using hashtags but its usually only to promote an event or my personal content.
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