Hashtag Trivia: 10 fun facts you surely didn’t know about the symbol!

hashtag n. : A word or phrase preceded by a hash and used to identify messages relating to a specific topic and also the hash symbol itself, when used in this way. The term hashtag is actually in dictionaries! Can you believe  it? Stick around and check out some  #awesome facts about your favorite symbol!

1. The first hashtag to be used on Twitter was Messina’s sample #barcamp. 

2. Around 125 million hashtags are shared by Twitter’s 328 million users every day. 

3. The most used hashtag on Twitter in 2016 was #Rio2016, closely followed by #Election2016 and #PokemonGo. 

4. An infuriating craze that swept the world in 2015 became a game, internet meme and hashtag. #TheDress plagued Twitter users for weeks as they tried to decide if the dress was indeed white and gold or blue and black. 

5. The Guinness World Record for the longest ever hashtag was awarded in 2013 to Paul Horner, author of Super Official News. The dizzying hashtag was 345 characters long, not including the #, and told a rude story about Horner’s life. 

6. The term hashtag was added to the Merriam Webster dictionary in 2014. The definition said: “A word or phrase preceded by the symbol # that classifies or categorises the accompanying text (such as a tweet).”