One of the men who helped shape Twitter has claimed a technology revolution means that traditional relationships will soon be a thing of the past.

Chris Messina, who coined the now-ubiquitous Twitter hashtag, helping it achieve enormous popularity, has said the world has changed so much people no longer need a single partner.

Messina, who used to work for Google, said that the increasing wealth of the Western world means people no longer need partners to meet their basic needs and care for offspring.

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Theory: Chris Messina, pictured above, set out how he thinks technology will change relationships in a blog

Writing in a blog post for CNN Money, he then argues that internet phenomena like dating websites and Tinder-like hookup apps mean that many people can find a ready supply of partners.

Messina says he lives out his theory with his partner, who whom he has a 'committed' relationship - but one in which both people are free to see others.

He wrote: 'We're committed to each other, but have a porous boundary around our relationship, meaning we've agreed that it's OK for either of us to express romantic feelings toward other people or to be physically intimate with other people, so long as we're honest and transparent about our intentions with one another.

Path to non-monogamy? Messina said hookup apps, like Tinder, above, could change social norms

'These things don't diminish the integrity of our relationship. Rather, they deepen our understanding of each other's wants and desires, and give us the space to grow independently, without growing apart.'

Messina termed the catalyst for the predicted social change Big Dating - and said it could be as fundamental as the invention of the computer.

According to the tech guru, the constant connections and the rise of mass-use apps like Snapchat, where you post to large audiences rather than individuals, feed in to the idea of having multiple partners.

He wrote: 'Big Dating unbundles monogamy and sex. It offers to maximize episodes of intimacy while minimizing the risk of rejection or FOMO [fear of missing out].

'Today's most interesting apps (Snapchat, Secret, et al) are designed to support Big Dating, offering discreet, asynchronous, anonymish, non-exclusive communications.

'Multiplied against algorithms that optimize the pool of potential partners for connection (requiring no more than swipe left, swipe left, swipe right to operate), romantic partners are now more fungible [interchangeable] than ever.'

Messina, an early adopter of Twitter, though not an employee, made his contribution to social media history by suggesting users type a # symbol before key terms to organize posts.

The trend took off, providing an easy way for users to make sense of sometimes-chaotic feeds and find posts they were interested in, and quickly became part of the internet's vernacular.