Hashtaggens födelsedag – ”uppfanns” för 12 år sedan

A hashtag is a type of metadata tag used on social networks such as Twitter and other microblogging services, allowing users to apply dynamic, user-generated tagging which makes it possible for others to easily find messages with a specific theme or content. Users create and use hashtags by placing the number sign or pound sign # usually in front of a word or unspaced phrase in a message. The hashtag may contain letters, digits, and underscores. Searching for that hashtag will yield each message that has been tagged with it. A hashtag archive is consequently collected into a single stream under the same hashtag. For example, on the photo-sharing service Instagram, the hashtag #bluesky allows users to find all the posts that have been tagged using that hashtag. The use of hashtags was first proposed by Chris Messina in a 2007 tweet, that, although initially decried by Twitter as a "thing for nerds" eventually led to their use rapidly becoming widespread throughout the platform. Messina, who made no attempt to copyright the use because he felt "they were born of the internet, and owned by no one", has subsequently been credited as the godfather of the hashtag. By the end of the decade hashtags could be seen in most emerging as well as established social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and YouTube — so much so that Instagram had to officially place a "30 hashtags" limit on its posts to prevent people from abusing their use, a limit which Instagrammers eventually circumvented by posting hashtags in the comments section of their posts. As of 2018 more than 85% of the top 50 websites by traffic on the Internet use hashtags and their use is common by millennials, Gen Z, politicians, influencers, and celebrities worldwide. Because of its widespread use, hashtag was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in June 2014. The term hashtag is sometimes erroneously used to refer to the hash symbol itself when used in the context of a hashtag. Formal taxonomies can be developed from the folk taxonomy rendered machine-readable by the markup that hashtags provide. This process is called folksonomy.