How Twitter Transformed The #Hashtag Symbol From Humble Pound To Hyperlink Verb [infographic]

Justin Timberlake might mock it on late-night TV, but Twitter’s wildly successful IPO underscores the power of the hashtag. The symbol has gone from relative anonymity six years ago to being seen in Super Bowl commercials, playing a part in the democratic uprisings of the Arab Spring and transforming the way social media users tell stories.

The history of the hashtag is brief, but powerful. And with Twitter shares soaring, and the hashtag uniting conversations on almost all major social media sites, the future of these four, crosshatched lines seems increasingly prominent.

Here, courtesy of social software company Offerpop — which just released the hashtag-based social marketing platform Hashtag gallery — is a brief history of the hashtag, and a look at the power of the symbol that is used by more than 70 percent of the mobile market and makes a Tweet 55 percent more likely to be re-tweeted.