You don’t need to be a big fan of The Tonight Show to know about Fallon’s famously hilarious weekly hashtag challenge. As Jimmy frequently announces before he reads his favorite comments, each hashtag would usually become a trending topic on Twitter in the United States within a few minutes after its posting.
Although hashtags have become a pivotal point of our online presence, their origins date back way before Twitter days. In 1988, the first hash symbol was used on Internet Relay Chat (IRC) to label groups and topics that were available across the entire network. Originally, the hash symbols were used for grouping similar messages and content so that users could easily find the information they were looking for.
Bored Panda reached out to Wisconsin-based artist Bree Sweet, who goes by the handle @breesweetack, who shared a funny tweet in response to Fallon’s challenge. “Technology can read my face to open my phone, but the vending machine can’t recognize a dollar bill with a crease in it #TheyNeedToFix.”
Bree said it did air on the show but “they reworded it for some reason, as it wasn't word for word of what I wrote, but it was cool to have it on air.” The woman laughed that she “got her 15 seconds of fame, I guess” and added “I would have hoped it would be for something else.”
In reference to her hilarious observation, Bree had some great news which proved that the problem was indeed fixed after the #TheyNeedToFix challenge. “Thankfully the vending machines at my work recently updated to accept iPay, so the dollar bill issue is no longer a problem.”
“I had it down to a fine art of how to flatten a dollar bill in order for it to get accepted. It was a 3-minute process, but addicting like playing the lottery. I can't describe the feeling of sweet satisfaction when the machine wouldn't spit the dollar back, I always knew it was going to be a good day that day,” Bree said humorously.
The use of hashtags on social media was first proposed by American blogger, product consultant and speaker Chris Messina 14 years ago. In August 2007, Chris tweeted: “how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?” Today, he’s widely acknowledged as the inventor of the hashtag.
To everyone’s surprise, Chris didn’t patent the hashtag concept. A patent could have given him ownership of hashtags as an HTML-activated device that allows Twitter users to sort their feeds by topic. People believe that hypothetically, he could have licensed hashtags to Twitter and made some pretty good cash off it.
It turned out that one of the reasons was that Twitter itself first rejected the idea. Chris told the Wall Street Journal: “[Twitter] told me flat out, ‘These things are for nerds. They’re never going to catch on.’” Paradoxically, today, Twitter would probably be of little use if not for its linked hashtags.
In response to the question posted on Quora, Chris explained further about his decision not to patent the hashtag. “Claiming a government-granted monopoly on the use of hashtags would have likely inhibited their adoption, which was the antithesis of what I was hoping for, which was broad-based adoption and support—across networks and mediums,” he said.
Another reason, according to Chris, is that he himself had no interest in making money (directly) off hashtags. “They are born of the internet, and should be owned by no one. The value and satisfaction I derive from seeing my funny little hack used as widely as it is today is valuable enough for me to be relieved that I had the foresight not to try to lock down this stupidly simple but effective idea.”
