Sometimes it's hard to tell if a well-formatted blog is popular or it's just a single person screaming into the void. We don't have pageview counters anymore.
replyI didn't see any comments on this page, nor did the linked Mastodon accounts have much engagement, and that suggests the latter.
Also, both the number of and length of posts started increasing dramatically in 2024, which might just be a strange coincidence.
Or IRC channels.
replyYou are right that hash symbols were used for IRC channels but I'm almost certain that hashtags were a Twitter invention.
replyThat seems a little tautological, like "Maybe Unix had directories, but Windows Folders are purely a Microsoft invention."
replyThey're both a symbol-with-label text convention for users, and in each case it designates a topic and mechanism for users of the service to converge-on the topic.