Back in 2007, designer Chris Messina asked his Twitter followers what they thought of using the pound sign to group conversations on Twitter. Today, whether you're participating in "#followfriday" or a question-and-answer session with your favorite comedian, hashtags are important to the Twitter experience -- becoming so important that they are used offline in marketing for everything from movies to college football games.
To celebrate its one-year anniversary, the Daily Dot website, in collaboration with Topsy, looked into the most popular English-language hashtags of the past year. They used a metric called Momentum, which is described as "a measure of the combined popularity of a link and the speed at which that popularity is increasing."
The top hashtag was "moscow," which became a city of protest after contentious election results saw more and more people call for fair elections and an end to Vladimir Putin's control of Russia. London soccer club Arsenal claimed the No. 2 spot on the list. The popular club had its fair share of noteworthy news this year, perhaps none greater than when CNN host -- and longtime fan -- Piers Morgan dramatically urged star player Robin van Persie to remain with the team rather than joining a rival club.
Other entries on the list include "freedom," which was used in everything from tweets about the Fourth of July to those about Bahrain, and "what i miss most," a hashtag that encourages its users to get nostalgic and reflect on what they miss from their younger years.
The list shows what might be expected -- Twitter has a little something for everyone.
Complete List of Top Hashtags Between August 2011 and August 2012
1) #moscow
2) #arsenal
3) #takemeout
4) #freedom
5) #nadarkhani
6) #whatimissmost
7) #arabidol
8) #waystogetoffthephone
9) #tweetforyoucef
10) #twalculate