Twitter update (the hashtag of history)

June 25, 2012

When it comes to crisis management and crisis communications Twitter is a force to be reckoned with.

I’m sure all the whip-smart readers of the Crisis Solutions blog will be fully up to speed on all things related to Twitter, but I’ve just come across something I hadn’t spotted before. The hashtag or # used to link and find groups tweeting about a particular topic can be attributed to @chrismessina.

On August 23, 2007, he tweeted the following suggestion about integrating the online conferencing network @barcamp, which he helped create, into Twitter conversations: ‘how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?’

And now with millions using Twitter it would be unnavigable without hashtags.

Here are some latest stats (which no doubt will be out of date by the time you read them):

• Twitter has 140m active users
• 40% of Britons who own a smartphone use it every day while watching television
• 41% of Britons who own a tablet use the device while watching TV every day

And apparently in South Korea a new apartment block is about to be built in the shape of a hashtag. @chrismessina had a concrete idea.

Sources: Twitter, Nielsen