Warren Whitlock

Short for "Happy New Year" A tradition that started with @WarrenWhitlock's promotion with #happy09 that was a trending topic for 4 days. A gift basket of prizes was given to one of the participants, but the promo morphed into a way to tag people talking about happiness, a brighter future. Ultimately, the "short new year" became the biggest use and has continued without a promotion until now. Watch #happy14 to see what happens

On Dec 31, 2008 @WarrenWhitlock, author of the first book about Twitter, had a crazy idea about giving away a basket of gifts to celebrate the arrival of a happy year. Soon, people were using it to talk about happiness, giving, and the general greeting for "Happy New Year" and the tag remained the #1 trending topic on Twitter for 4 days. Soon, there were so many users on Twitter only things known outside of Twitter would hit the trending topics. For 2014, the #Happy14 tag is being shared as a general "new year greeting" and maybe more