I won’t hazard a guess as to when, because I always get these things grossly wrong, but a while ago the ‘hash tagging’ craze hit the world.
I was at school at the time and could could hardly enter a bathroom without encountering a fourteen year old girl sympathetically saying ‘wow, that #blows, Teagan,’ to her distressed friend. It didn’t distress me: I enjoyed it, in fact, trying to decipher the unpunctuated string of words like ‘#elevendifferentflavoursofchapstickforthepriceofeightbooyeah’ and ‘#googlingyourselfandtherebeingabigsweatymanasthefirstresultongoogleimages’ and ‘#jonbonjoviissohoteventhoughhe’slikeseventy’, even though I don’t think I’ve ever used one myself.
But the thing that surprised and delighted me was how Facebook rolled with the ball. All of a sudden, the hash tags were little hyperlinks, which opened a window of trending posts or tags. To me it seems on par with turning the graffiti on a building into a mural (not that hash tagging = graffiti), because Facebook saw an opportunity and took it. It fairy-godmothered the hash tag system.
The world is ever changing, ever adapting to us. Users and consumers are the best design-fictioners, because they throw what they need on the table, and then bang it around loudly and repetitively and unceasingly. It’s #incredible how quickly things are coming to fruition around us, especially with the internet and technology.
Anyway, I #hopethatyouhaveafantasticdayandthatfacebookcontinuestofairygodmotheryourdreams.