Are Hashtags Dead? Not At All, But...
The future of hashtags according to Chris Messina, the inventor of the hashtag, and some advice from experts Matt Navarra and Dante Licona.
💬 Quick CONVERSATION STARTERS:
We also asked Matt Navarra and Dante Licona…
Are hashtags still relevant despite Elon Musk and Adam Mosseri saying the opposite?
Has the role of hashtags changed since 2007 when Chris Messina first proposed it to Twitter?
What platforms you think hashtags are perfect for? Or what platform do they still work for?
What is your advice to creators and social media managers to best use hashtags?
The future of hashtags
Just a couple of weeks ago we attended a National Digital Roundtable (NDR) event at LinkedIn’s Washington DC office. What an incredible conversation!
NDR has been a very engaging platform and a point of reference for many communications, public affairs, and advocacy practitioners in Washington DC — and they even closed 2024 with an event at the White House.
One of the takeaways from the NDR-LinkedIn event was how the nature of the hashtag has changed and how social media managers are recalibrating their use of hashtag.
But there are still many questions about hashtags. Are they dead? Can we still use them? How and when? On What platforms?
We reached out to Chris Messina, the inventor of the hashtag, and here is what he told us…
Chris does not need any introduction. His 2007 tweet proposing the pound sign — what today we know as the hashtag — changed the way operate on social media… But lately, the role of the hashtag has been challenged, in particular by Adam Mosseri, Meta’s head of Instagram, and tech billionaire Elon Musk, owner of X, the now defunct former Twitter.
We asked Chris a few questions… And, just yesterday, Chris put his thoughts and answers in a must-read Medium post. I invite all our subscribers to read it!
Any reaction to Elon Musk and Adam Mosseri?
“I disagree with Elon on this one. Hashtags are about more than just aesthetics; they’re about organizing information, fostering community, and giving voice to movements.
They were never meant to be pretty. They were meant to be useful and universal.
Many people have tried and failed to come up with something better to replace them.
Sure, many people abuse and overuse hashtags, but they’re far from obsolete. They’ve become an integral part of how we communicate and share information online — especially across social media platforms.”
Are hashtags still relevant?
“The use of hashtags is even more important and vital today.
People complain about the dominance and lack of transparency in algorithmic feeds. Yet hashtags provide a bottom-up mechanism to fight back.
Anyone can create a new hashtag without getting permission from anyone else. Hashtags are a tool for freedom, self-expression, and self-organization. They help individuals and small communities curate and label content, and platforms like Bluesky and Surf.social amplify their utility.
They act like public parks next to increasingly commercialized digital town squares.”
Do you believe other social media platforms will follow the same path as Musk, or do you see alternative ways for hashtags to evolve?
“Other platforms like Threads and Bluesky each tried to replace or modify how hashtags work. Threads’s topic tags seem to be a partial success but haven’t inspired grassroots movements. Bluesky abandoned their efforts to deviate from hashtag norms and embraced conventional hashtags, as they were one of their most requested features. Mastodon has adopted a scheme that hides extraneous hashtags that often appear at the end of posts, which is a reasonable improvement.
One of the hardest things to do in consumer software is to get large numbers of people to change their behavior. Even when platforms have tried to nudge users to abandon hashtags, they continue using them. Hashtags will continue to be controversial, but they provide too much emergent value (with relatively little cost) to imagine other platforms following any effort by Musk to squash them.”
What is your advice to creators and social media managers to best use hashtags?
“Hashtags are the spice of social media: a little can go a long way.
I don’t recommend using more than three tags. tags. I recommend to make sure they’re relevant, contextual, and timely.
But it also depends on your goals: are you trying to start a movement or join one?
Personally, I use hashtags for personal archival reasons. This makes it easier for me to search my own content to refer back to things I’ve said or seen before.
Whatever you do, focus on the message and meaning and generating interesting and worthwhile content. If you keep at it, hashtags or not, people may find you. Significantly, engage with other people’s content that use similar hashtags. The brilliance and utility of social media is found in its bidirectionality. If you’re only using it as a low-cost medium to spam others, hashtags aren’t going to save you.
At least on that point, Mosseri and I agree.
Elon? He can go # himself.”
We asked two experts to answers some of our questions about hashtags, including about strategies for brands and for digital diplomacy…
Meet Matt Navarra and Dante Licona.
Matt Navarra is one of Europe's most well-known and in-demand social media consultants. With 20+ years of industry experience, Matt has worked with some of the world’s most popular brands, including Google, Meta, Pinterest, and the United Nations.
Matt, who is based in London, UK, is the founder of Geekout, a suite of resources including Matt’s buzzing ‘Geekout’ group on Facebook, the hit Geekout with Matt Navarra podcast, his critically-acclaimed Geekout Newsletter, and the NEW Geekout PRO paid membership community on WhatsApp.
Dante Licona is also based in Europe. He is a social media strategist and consultant, originally from Mexico and currently living in Switzerland. Dante helps teams, organizations, and leaders communicate more effectively.
In February 2025, Dante joined Global Health Strategies as the Head of Digital Communications. He has over 16 years of experience in strategic communication roles at the Mexican government, the World Health Organization, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), and various consulting clients.
And here is what Matt and Dante told us…
Are hashtags still relevant despite Elon Musk and Adam Mosseri saying the opposite?
Matt Navarra: Hashtags are no longer the discovery engine they once were and I think that's by design.
Elon Musk called them ancient and Mosseri downplayed their usefulness which is a reflection of how both X and Instagram are steering users towards more algorithmic discovery and not search led journeys.
But saying hashtags are completely irrelevant is probably a step too far l think. The truth is that hashtags are now platform-dependent tools. They're not universal growth hacks anymore and on some platforms they've lost their prominence, but it doesn't mean that they're obsolete. They're just not the all purpose Swiss Army knife they once were in the early 2010s.
Musk didn't kill hashtags. He made them redundant in his version of the platform. Hashtags haven’t died, but they definitely have got demoted.
Dante Licona: It’s not one platform alone. Hashtags are becoming less relevant across social.
When the owner of X has stated that “hashtags are an abomination” and consistently held those views over time, maybe it’s worth listening.
When the CEO of Instagram has stated time and time again that hashtags do not help increase reach, maybe it’s worth listening.
When LinkedIn has removed the ability to follow hashtags in their platform, maybe it’s worth listening.
Has the role of hashtags changed since 2007 when Chris Messina first proposed it to Twitter?
Matt: Hashtags were born as grassroots metadata. Metadata are open, chaotic, user-led, and now, over the last couple of decades they have become corporate or curated, and increasingly decorative.
What began as a genius way to categorize protest movements and niche topics is kind of morphed into brand language and mean structural or vanity metrics.
I think their purpose has shifted from discovery to belonging in. In 2025, hashtags are how people signal identity or align with causes or surf trends. They're not how they expect to go viral and that's not necessarily a bad thing.The role of the hashtag has simply matured.
What hashtags have lost in function they've gained something in cultural currency, and I think the power of hashtags isn't gone, it's just more symbolic than strategic nowadays.
Dante: Yes! The role of hashtags changed. It was a different time. Yes, they always had a functionality and practical shortcuts for indexing conversations.
Moreover, every social team, every cam
paign, many grassroots movements, used hashtags in digital, and in physical spaces.
But artificial intelligence (AI) changed that dramatically. Most platforms today have the capacity to know what your content is about, even without descriptions.
What platforms you think hashtags are perfect for? Or what platform do they still work for?
Matt: I would probably argue that TikTok is the undisputed heavyweight for this year and recent years. It's still the backbone of its trend architecture because hashtags define content lanes, influence your FYP recommendations, and shape creator challenges. So ignoring them on that platform would probably be a mistake.
LinkedIn used to have more of a role for the hashtag and they do help terms to help you show up in more niche professional spaces, especially for B2B recruitment and thought leadership stuff but again even LinkedIn has played down the importance of it due to the advances in their algorithm and how they can identify the topics and the content that is going to most appeal to people without you need to tag things with hashtags.
Instagram is more of a mix bag. I think Reels can still benefit from a couple of well place hashtags but I think the golden age of like-for-like reach hacking has got long gone and as Adam Mosseri has constantly said over the recent couple of years hashtags are not going to, in any meaningful way, move the needle in terms of reach so people should not expect too much from them.
On YouTube and YouTube Shorts there's some limited value again for labeling or trend participation more than for actual discovery.
I do think on TikTok hashtags are a language, on LinkedIn they're more a search filter, on Instagram mostly, arguably noise now then more than anything else.
Dante: TikTok comes to mind. At least they have a special place for them in the app search field (it’s the last one, though!). That space may still be helpful for organizations that are working in a campaign. In my previous role at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), we launched hashtag #ForClimate many years ago, and still you can find the best videos there. Even with a description of the hashtag purpose: https://www.tiktok.com/tag/forclimate.
YouTube still has a (small) place for them — “Tags can be useful if content in your video is commonly misspelled. Otherwise, tags play a minimal role in helping viewers find your video.”
Bluesky seems to have the indexing conversations advantage.
On Truth Social there’s a space for them in “Topics.”
Other than that, honestly, the most useful hashtags are for me nowadays in the “Notes” app in my computer and phone.
What is your advice to creators and social media managers to best use hashtags?
Matt: Use fewer hashtags but use them smarter. Dumping 30 hashtags under a post is probably a waste of your time and you're better off picking three or four hashtags relevant, contextual, aligned with how your audience actually searches or browses content.
Study what's trending on each platform, but don't force it because hashtags should support your content, not hijack it and always assume the algorithm's smarter than your hashtag strategy.
So focus on the content quality and engagement above all else.
For brands, avoid cringe hashtag campaigns unless you know they're going to catch on organically cause no one wants #JoinTheConversation — it feels forced and corporate.
If your content needs 20 hashtags to get noticed, your content probably isn't good enough and then think of hashtags more like seasoning and not the main ingredient.
Dante: If you’re going to use a hashtag, be super selective and intentional. And just one!
But who knows, maybe in the future hashtag users are the ones who will stand out.
#interesting