On Twitter, phrases for hashtags should use capitalization of all words for reasons of accessibility.
Screen readers can parse it that way and can't if you don't and it's easier for human eyes too, so it helps visually-impaired people who aren't yet actually blind.
I always felt that the hashtags were a good idea, but that everybody was using them wrong.
If, for example, my tweet looks like this:
"I had a great time posting on Hacker News #hackernews, #great_time"
then I am doing it all wrong. I thought the smarter implementation would be to do something more like:
"I had a #great_time posting on #hackernews"
It doesn't eat up as much space, but the inclusion of the hash allows for content grouping and all the other nonsense it provides.
The first time I saw it used in the first way, I was kind of sad for the author, as I believe that the intent was for them to replace words, and the author just didn't get it... but I've seen it misused more than I haven't, so either the world at large is doing it wrong, or I am misunderstanding something.
After thinking about it: For languages with no spaces or other word separators hashtags probably don't work that well.
They might work for human readers but I think they are mostly useful because they can be automatically extracted or converted to links. I wonder if hashtags are used in Chinese or Japanese?
The fascinating thing about languages is that there is no rule without exception. When it comes to ! and ? even a familiar language like Spanish is suddenly strange.
The hashtags are also all in all caps, which gives me pause as to their fundamental competence as PR people. All caps lettering is hard to read. It is also viewed by most people online as yelling at people. Neither is a smooth public relations move.
In what way does this help people with hashtags? What problem is adressed? Just by looking at the use of hashtags by my non-technical acquaintances on Twitter or Facebook, nobody seems to have a problem with them. #confused
Idea for your next website: de-hashtagify a text. Implementation: something like s/#//g on the input text.
A strange example. Does the author really think hashtagifying the word 'content' has improved the tweet in some way? Do they expect people to be searching Twitter for #content and getting some useful results?
> It made me wince slightly when the article listed one of the names of # as hashtag, rather than hash. A hashtag begins with a hash, but the two aren't the same. (Although this looks to be a distinction that will be lost with time.)
It already has been. Whenever people mention a hashtag on a tv show or commercial, they always read #FooBarBaz as "hashtag foo bar baz". So it already is a common pronunciation for '#'.
> Spell the name like a normal person. Twitter works because it makes logical sense, spelled as it sounds. Tumblr is hard to explain to a non-tech user — tell your Mom to go to Tumblr.com and see what she types in.
Funny to read this example since Twitter used to be named "Twttr"! I guess they understood the problem soon enough!
Comments are made of words, which one can search for. How is "#this #text #more #searchable"? Less readable, that's for sure. I never understood why one would use hashtags, except as a joke. #lol #wedontneednohashtagz
I believe those who actively use hashtags on Twitter know what they are for -- it's amazingly useful feature that helps find exactly what you're interested in in seconds. Not only because of search itself, but because of collectively produced and commonly agreed hashtag names. As HN becomes more and more populated and signal/noise ratio goes down, hashtags would help HN readers not to lose important posts and replies. Exactly the same way as it works with Twitter now.
The tech is nice, but adding hashtags like this does, in my opinion, more harm than good. Hashtagifying common words does rarely make sense, except in those few cases when there is a specific conversation going on about that word for any special reason.
Users ask us all the time to add an automatic hashtagging feature to hashtagify.me, but I'm resisting those requests because bad hashtagging makes hashtags less useful. It would be great to find an algorithm that (at least almost) always finds hashtags that are really relevant, but until that will happen it's better to ask users to make a little effort.
Always use hashtags with care. While they can sometimes help a tweet make it into specialized aggregators, overuse or unnecessary usage can make a tweet look spammy or insincere.
Screen readers can parse it that way and can't if you don't and it's easier for human eyes too, so it helps visually-impaired people who aren't yet actually blind.
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