How a Wildfire Helped Spread the Hashtag

An anonymous reader writes: Chris Messina is credited with originating the use of hashtags at Twitter. What's not widely known is the role of San Diego's wildfires in making hashtags reach a tipping point. Messina, who was Twitter user 1,186, says in the fall of 2007, Web developer Nate Ritter started posting updates on the firestorms using the hashtag #sandiegofire. Other users, including the news media, glommed onto the handle and citizen journalism took a big step forward. From there, other world events and use cases (e.g., Instagram) would lead Twitter to make hashtags more searchable.

"hash" tag

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems you've been smoking hash when you writing that comment.

Boo hashtag!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hashtags are polluting search results when it comes to IRC channels.

Did you say hashtag?

[Trogre]

Wait, do Americans actually call it a hashtag and not poundtag (or if close to Redmond, a sharptag)? Have they finally left that #=pound silliness behind?

#hopeyetforhumanity

Re:Did you say hashtag?

[CastrTroy]

Why not an octothorpetag [wiktionary.org].

Free range pedant cited!

[khallow]

Have they finally left that #=pound silliness behind?

I can see him over there. But how am I supposed to throw a net on him and beat him with a stick? This internet thing misses some vital functionality!

Re:

[loufoque]

It's only 'pound' in a DTMF context.

Re:

[omnichad]

Or as shorthand for weight measurements

Welcome to the late 80s

[poptix]

We were using it for IRC way back then, they're called channels.

What was old is new again.

Re:Welcome to the late 80s

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Shhh. Don't let the secret out. Our entire 'digital economy' consists of re-implementing concepts from 1975-1995(approximately) either on mobile phones, in HTML/JS, or both, and then snorting the VC money. We can't let them know that.

Re:

[Darinbob]

It's ok, VC people don't read Slashdot and wouldn't understand it if they accidentally stumbled across it.

Re:

[Darinbob]

The story feels strainge in other ways. For example, wouldn't Twitter have to add the hashtag feature before a customer could "originate the use"? Or maybe this is a Twitter thing, such that only things invented at Twitter are acknowledged to exist.

(I've never used twitter, it seems clumsy, uninformative, and does nothing that no other service can do better.)

No

[Threni]

They were already in use. Any subsequent use would help increase their usage, obviously. If not this then something else. There's nothing notable about this case.

Metadata

[koekepeer]

Something I never understood is why the hashtags need to count towards the 140 character limit - IMO they should be parsed out and stored as post metadata

Re:Metadata

[Tom]

Because they are a hack. Twitter wasn't designed to include any metadata except author, date, etc. - certainly not topics, tags or keywords.

The problem is feature creep. Of course users want tags and keywords and topics and threading and circles and access levels/restrictions and grouping and two hundred other features. But if you give them what they want, they will complain that it's all too complicated and move elsewhere.

Re:Metadata

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Man, you geeks are always making this difficult. Just solve it the easy way: Don't give all the users all the features they want, that would confuse them(as you said). Just give all the users all the features that I want. Much less confusing, and I'm happy!

Re:

[ralphius]

Man, you geeks are always making this difficult. Just solve it the easy way: Don't give all the users all the features they want, that would confuse them(as you said). Just give all the users all the features that I want. Much less confusing, and I'm happy!

You sound like my boss...

Re:

[georgewad]

He sounds like Steve Jobs.

Re:

[Darinbob]

Zombie Steve Jobs eats braiiins!

Re:

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect that it's a combination of two things: In Ye Distante Past, the 140 character limit was hard and fast because SMS is inflexible like that. Since that time, any SMS-related limitations have become somewhere between effectively obsolete and laughably irrelevant; but (given the absolute profusion of make-noise-on-the-internet services with which they compete) Twitter is loath to do anything that makes them less distinctive, and their somewhat tenuous claim to survivability, much less value, that much

Re: Metadata

[Ksevio]

The 160 character limit is for 7 bit characters. Twitter uses standard 8 bit characters so is limited to 140.

Re:

[Ben Hutchings]

SMS allows 7-bit, 8-bit and variable-length (UTF-16) encodings, for 160/140/80 code units per message. The 140 character limit leaves some room to add a username prefix when users receive tweets by SMS in a 7-bit encoding.

Whatever the restrictions of SMS or the original Twitter service, tweets may now use any Unicode character (for some version of Unicode). Whenever they forward tweets by SMS, if they have to use an 8-bit encoding or UTF-16 they may need to split.

Re:

[CastrTroy]

I don't know if many people remember this, but you used to (and probably still can) send and receive twitter messages by SMS. This was the original rule for limiting Twitter messages to 140 characters. That gave you enough space to send the twitter handle and the message within the 150 characters allowed by SMS. Before the days of smart phones and data plans people used to regularly send out tweets by sending text messages to 21212.

Re:

[omnichad]

I thought it was 41414, but I haven't used that in almost a year. I think it's still active. I only bought a smart phone this year and I had been using it before that from time to time.

Just set my alarm...

[bluegutang]

for two years from now.

I can post the exact same article and everyone will think it is new and original. It will get shared widely, and I'll make a day's salary from the ads on the article.

Just another few hundred more somewhat-obscure topics (I can google for ideas), and I'll have a steady indefinite income at the cost of posting a "new" link per day.

This is what passes for "news" nowadays...

Ok lets get something straight here.

[koan]

citizen journalism took a big step forward

Twitter used for news is the decline of journalism, not a leap forward.
Nothing makes a news organization look more ridiculous than using twitter post, they are unverifiable at the time used, and more often than not I've watched as they have been proven incorrect or patently false.

#Blame

[wisnoskij]

#So #now #we #know #who #to #blame #for #this #shit.

Another SanDiegoFire memory

[calidoscope]

One of the most useful instances of social media and Googles apps was a series of postings on a San Diego Union Tribune discussion board related to the fires. The poster was embedding links to a Google Maps page with frequently updated fire perimeter along with reports of where the evacuation centers were being set up. It was very useful as my family and I were about an hour from needing to evacuate when the winds shifted.

Re:

[cowabummer]

I just listened to this episode also! It does a great job outlining the entire history of this character and how the #mainstreammedia has hammered it into the ground

Oblig...

[complete loony]

So then the hashtag spread like wildfire?