Whatever is happening in the world, is happening on Twitter. From events of importance to advocating for change, the world is talking about everything on Twitter. Every minute 350,000 tweets are posted. With time hashtags have gained a lot of popularity and have become staples of social media platforms. From social issues to product launch, or any meme-y content, everything has its dedicated hashtag. Ever pondered on how all this started? Here\u2019s how hashtags and Twitter trending emerged on social media platforms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Hashtags were never called by this name until famous on social media. This (#) hash aka pound symbol was first used on the Internet in 1988 on a platform named Internet Realy Chat (IRC). People across IRC used it to label groups and topics based on various information available across the network in form of text, videos, or images. The primary purpose that (#) served on IRC was it enabled people to search for relevant channel or content. As Twitter came into existence in the year 2006, it soon gained popularity among a section of people who used Twitter to put up short updates. But, soon there were complaints from users that they saw irrelevant content and find it hard to search for required information. The Twitter audience was looking for a more simplified functionality to communicate better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a solution to this issue, Chris Messina suggested implementing an IRC-like hashtag system to group topics of similar interest. And tweeted about his idea on 23, August 2007. <\/p>\n\n\n\n