This Twitter user 'invented' the hashtag in 2007 — but the company thought it was 'too nerdy'
In 2007, social media hashtag inventor Chris Messina was a Silicon Valley product designer who thought of a way to make Twitter easier to use. When the company turned down his initial request to work the hashtag into their platform, his friends and other users utilizing the symbol to post news of a San Diego wildfire helped it take off, grass roots style. "The hashtag happened to be the simplest, dumbest thing that regular people would end up using," Messina tells CNBC Make It.