Whether it’s shedding light on global movements and events, connecting people everywhere to like-minded communities or just establishing a direct path to the content you’re most passionate about, it all happens on Twitter. Thanks to the power of the global cultural phenomenon that has shaped the way we communicate: the hashtag. Born on Twitter in 2007, celebrates its 14th anniversary on August 23rd, otherwise known as #HashtagDay.
14 years ago on August 23, @chrismessina Tweeted #barcamp, the first time a hashtag was ever used. Over the past 14 years, it has evolved from a user-created way to categorize or ‘tag’ Tweets, to becoming part of our everyday speech, changing the nature of communication online and becoming one of the most influential symbols of the digital age.
how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?
— Chris Messina (@chrismessina) August 23, 2007
To celebrate its impact in shaping conversations and creating communities that unite millions of people across the globe, Twitter launched a new #HashtagDay emoji that was live for the day and available in multiple languages, including Arabic, allowing people across the globe to join in on the conversations.
From January through June 2021, a whopping 12.6B Tweets included at least one hashtag, with 140M of them being unique, proving that people on Twitter are getting more and more creative every year.
Looking at the MENA region, top hashtags that have been trending include:
UAE
Between January and June 2021, 73.2M hashtags were used on Twitter in the UAE, out of which 20M were unique hashtags. The total number of hashtags used in the UAE saw a 5 per cent increase as compared to the same period last year.
Some of the top Tweeted hashtags in the UAE include:
- #bts
- #كورونا (Corona)
- #newprofilepic
- #رمضان (Ramadan)
- #مسبار_الأمل (The hope probe)
Additionally, here’s how people can leverage the power of a hashtag to Tweet:
- Hashtags can actually help categorise Tweets – just use the symbol (#) before a relevant keyword or phrase in a Tweet
- To access all the conversations on a particular theme – just click on the hashtagged word in any message and all the Tweets with a similar hashtag will come up on your timeline
- Popular hashtags often emerge as Trending Topics
- A hashtag will not work if there are spaces or punctuations in it
- If a user Tweets with a hashtag on a public account, anyone who does a search for that hashtag may find their Tweet
Happy #HashtagDay
