Hashtag creator Chris Messina’s book recommendations

Chris Messina is an American blogger and the inventor of the hashtag, which had an immense impact on social media platforms worldwide.

In this article, we’ll outline Chris Messina’s most significant career achievements and take a look at his top book recommendations.

About Chris Messina and the history of the hashtag

Christopher Reaves Messina is a social technology specialist, product hunter, product designer, and open-source advocate.

From a young age, he was interested in different forms of art. While in high school, a job at a web design company in New Hampshire instilled a love for web design and the internet.

With a degree in Communication Design, he’s had a wide variety of jobs in tech companies, including Google and Uber. He’s also worked on creating internet communities such as BarCamp and co-working spaces.

In 2019, he left Silicon Valley and toured around the world, giving talks about social media evolution. He focuses on the possible impact of the adoption of synthetic media and artificial intelligence. He also has a popular Spotify playlist, where he uploads his podcasts.

Additionally, he runs a consulting company named Citizen Agency, where he provides clients with guidance, design, product research, and more.

His idea for the hashtag came after a long research and app development journey. Once his proposal was ready, he presented it to Biz Stone, one of Twitter’s co-founders. Unfortunately, the Twitter co-founder didn’t seem interested in the idea, but that didn’t discourage Messina.

Twitter users already had a way to reach each other on the platform, using the @ symbol. Using the pound sign, Messina devised a way to identify a particular topic or event for interested users to get notifications about them. The hashtag has helped promote various social causes, starting with the San Diego County fire in 2007—and more recently the MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements.

While the initial research for the use of hashtags was done with Twitter, it was designed to work on every major social network, including Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

In 2013, he joined Product Hunt in San Francisco, which is a leading site for discovering new products. The company was initially founded by Ryan Hoover and eventually sold to AngelList.

Book recommendations by Chris Messina

If you’re looking for inspirational books about business and technology, here are some recommended by Chris Messina.

Cognitive Surplus

Cognitive Surplus by The New York Times bestselling author Clay Shirky provides readers with an exciting view of the media age. He reveals how people’s acceptance of technology has led to many creative inventions to bring about worldwide transformation.

Super Pumped

Super Pumped by Mike Isaac follows the story of Uber, from the startup that promised to revolutionalize the way people travel around cities to its battles against taxi drivers and unions. The book is based on the testimony of hundreds of current and former Uber employees.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

In The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz provides an honest view of the difficulties of running a startup. While many authors have focused on building a startup, Horowitz offers useful advice to navigate the problems that business schools don’t cover.

Antifragile

In Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author investigates a world people don’t understand. He analyses probability, luck, risk, human error, and other variables that impact human decisions.

State of Denial

State of Denial is a book by Bob Woodward. It opens with a Pentagon statement sent in 2006, relating to insurgents and terrorists’ capabilities to increase their level of violence. From there, the author explains the intricate plan between President Bush, Congress, and the Pentagon to handle the situation, including concealing information from each other.

How to Be an Adult in Relationships

In How to Be an Adult in Relationships, author David Richo doesn’t focus on finding a soul mate but on the foundations of being a mature and loving person. According to the author, applying five fundamental concepts leads to more meaningful connections throughout life.

Steal Like an Artist

Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative is the first installment of a trilogy by Austin Kleon. He believes that everyone has a creative side and offers readers a positive message encouraging them to connect with their artistic capabilities.

Start With Why

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek is an inspirational book about looking for a business purpose. According to the author, starting with the why is what led Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and others to success, despite being completely different characters aiming for different goals.

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman is a psychologist and a Nobel prize winner in Economics. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, the author explains the two systems that drive people’s thinking. The first system is the one driven by intuition and emotions, and the second is logical thinking, which is slower.

Creativity, Inc.

Creativity, Inc. by Pixar Animation Studio co-founder Edwin Catmull and writer Amy Wallace is the first-time look inside the studio, including the meetings and creative sessions that contributed to the making of Oscar-winning animated films. The book is also presented as a manual on thinking outside the box and developing innovative ideas.

Listen to Chris Messina’s book recommendations on Speechify Audiobooks.

If you like reading books but don’t have the time to sit down and enjoy a good story, you’ll love Speechify Audiobooks. The online platform has thousands of books in audible format available for streaming, including the books recommended by Chris Messina.

You can acquire books individually or get a subscription based on credits to get as many books as you want per month. Plus, you can access the books from your computer or portable devices.

Visit Speechify Audiobooks and enjoy the classics of literature and new authors.

FAQ

Who is the owner of hashtag?

Chris Messina created the hashtag, but he never patented it.

What was the hashtag initially used for?

The first hashtag was used on Internet Relay Chat (IRC) in 1988.

What is the difference between a hashtag and a keyword?

Using hashtags will allow a single post to show up on the platform in question. Keywords increase the chances of multiple websites appearing on a search engine such as Google, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge.