The Birth of the Hashtag: How a Simple Symbol Changed the World

In 2007, an unused key on the phone keypad became the internet's most powerful organizing tool. In this episode, we sit down with Chris Messina, the Carnegie Mellon University alumnus who invented the hashtag – now used more than three billion times a day – and famously gave it away for free.

Messina shares the fascinating journey of the hashtag, from its roots in early "nerd centers" like his BarCamp meetup to its rejection by Twitter’s founders as "too nerdy." You’ll hear how a 2007 wildfire in San Diego turned the symbol into a life-saving tool for citizen journalism, ultimately forcing tech giants to embrace it. The conversation explores the hashtag's evolution from a simple metadata tag to a catalyst for global social movements like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter.

Messina reflects on his principled decision to forego intellectual property rights, ensuring the hashtag remained free for the world to use.

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