The New York Times waxes eloquent.
From the story...
In the early days, hashtags were primarily functional — a way of
categorizing tweets by topic so that members of the Twittersphere could
follow conversations of interest to them by searching for a list of
similarly tagged tweets. The first hashtag, proposed by the user Chris
Messina, was intended to collate conversations about the tech conference
BarCamp, so the hashtag was #barcamp. Other tags in the early days
served as straightforward metadata, directing people to tweets about
news, events and user interests: #sandiegofires, #roseparade, #education
and so on.
Over time, though, the hashtag has evolved into something else — a form
that allows for humor, darkness, wordplay and, yes, even poetry. During
this same period, Twitter as a corporation recognized the power of the
hashtag, which has now become a part of the site’s design, lingo and
sales pitch to advertisers. Your particular hashtag, for example, can
let the whole world know who’s talking about the release of #Halo4.
As a result, we’ve arrived at a strange moment for the hashtag. The
people at Twitter are fond of saying that the hashtag is the new URL —
and it’s true that you’re just as likely to see the former as the latter
these days on-screen at the end of a movie trailer.
Yet the rise of the hashtag’s commercial possibilities shouldn’t lead us
to overlook what is truly remarkable about it. This bit of utilitarian
Web ephemera, invented with functionality squarely in mind, has
blossomed into a marvelous and underappreciated literary device.
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