Chris Messina is best known for inventing the hashtag in 2007 but he's been living on — and defining — the future of social media and social technology ever since. He's served on both developer platform and product design teams at Google and Uber, consulted with startups, and co-founded YC-backed conversational social AI company. He is the #1 Product Hunter and co-hosts the Techmeme Ride Home Experience, a popular tech analysis podcast. He currently is a Product Lead focused on founder experience at Republic, an innovative financial technology company.

Throughout his career, Messina has created movements online & off and catalyzed change in large and small organizations starting in 2004, when he helped organize the grassroots movement that propelled Mozilla Firefox to its first 100M downloads. In 2005, he co-organized the first BarCamp and then popularized the unconference event model, which spread to over 350 cities worldwide. In 2006, he opened the first coworking spaces in the world, giving rise to a global movement.

He lives in Oakland, California with his partner Jo and two children, Airis and Olivia.

Social Media, Product Design, Product Development, Artificial Intelligence, Communication, Futurism, Information Technology, Science and Technology Professionals, Technology, Modern Media