Hashtags became links around 2009, but I think it was just critical mass. Instead of yelling into the void, it became very easy to stumble upon a community or d

Hashtags became links around 2009, but I think it was just critical mass. Instead of yelling into the void, it became very easy to stumble upon a community or discussion around a hobby or event, and follows didn’t require approval like friending on Facebook. Because Twitter lacked structure, you didn’t have to find the right place to be or the right people to speak to, you’d just overlap due to retweets and hashtags. So it inverted in some ways the traditional structure of social networks, allowing for emergent and ephemeral events and places (and thereby main characters) to bubble up and recede. You could be part of something without ever having to be admitted. This was somewhat true of the blogosphere but the currency of trackbacks and comments there wasn’t quite as freewheeling and expansive.