2007: Chris Messina invents the hashtag
To celebrate the Ad Club of New York's 120th anniversary, The Drum is inviting readers to share their favorite marketing moments from the past 120 years.
Chris Messina
Today’s marketing moment was chosen by Leslie Rasimas, director of marketing at MediaCom. Below, find out why the invention of the hashtag on Twitter is her favorite marketing moment.
how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?
— Chris Messina (@chrismessina) August 23, 2007
Thanks to a Tweet by Chris Messina (@chrismessina), a Twitter user from the early years, the hashtag was successfully pitched to the online community as a way to organize messages into meaningful groups.
Hashtags have since been embraced by users worldwide as a way to classify the often-frantic exchange of thoughts and information on the social networking site.
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