Hashtags 2.0 - An Annotated History of the Hashtag and a Window to its Future

Main Article Content

Eduardo Salazar

Abstract

Hashtags are an example of a Folksonomy, a term coined by Van der Val in 2004 to designate any label (or “tag”) that helps in the process of indexing and retrieval of online content. That said, the hash (#) symbol has a long heritage throughout the computer age. This paper makes an attempt to trace that history, since the hash was first used as a technology aid and towards its emergence as a new construct, the hashtag. It was first proposed openly by Chris Messina as simple means to “form groups” on Twitter, mirroring, in some ways, the way in which the # symbol was used on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) to designate “channels” themselves associated to specific topics and content exchange. The San Diego bushfires of October 2007 lead to an organic growth in the adoption of hashtags, growth that has not stopped since, making them ubiquitous in the current Internet age. Be as it may, the popularity of the hashtag made it also a vehicle to understand how information flows. Consequently, there is an incredibly rich literature explaining the mechanics of diffusion through social networks, opening, in the process, a new question: is that all for the hashtag? That’s a question we also attempt to answer by introducing a new construct: the “programmable hashtag” (or p#).

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Article Details

Section

Monograph

Author Biography

Eduardo Salazar, Kwangl International Ltd.

Eduardo Salazar s the Founder and MD of Macroanalytica, as well as member of the board, partner and advisor to several companies as Kwangl Solutions and Neustar Marketshare, amongst others.

In academia, he has been Senior Research Fellow at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires; Researcher at the NIESR in London; Research Associate at the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Cambridge; and Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Calculus (Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Buenos Aires). He's also been a former professor of Media Analytics at the Master in Business Intelligence of the ESIC Business School in Madrid.

How to Cite

Salazar, E. (2017). Hashtags 2.0 - An Annotated History of the Hashtag and a Window to its Future. Journal ICONO 14, 15(2), 16-54. https://doi.org/10.7195/ri14.v15i2.1091

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