FriendFeed - Search - #hashtagsaredead

Hashtags are used to group things of common interest. Like all items from a conference. But, do we really need them now in an age of great grouping and filtering like we have here on friendfeed? - Robert Scoble

253 more comments

They've been dead for some time. Track makes them unnecessary - Ken Sheppardson

Dead? I think they're around on Twitter not as often, but they're still alive! - Shane Adams

Shane: first thing you gotta realize when a pundit says something is "dead" is that it doesn't mean they go away, just that thing become less relevant than they are today. - Robert Scoble

They are generally not needed. Just search on the same term and save a character. - xero

Yes, because more people are on Twitter and Facebook - for now - Steve Rubel

I know for me personally after I post an update I am like crap I should have #hashed xyz. It is not an involuntary action yet. It may never. - Michael woodard

were they ever really alive to begin with? Nobody can decide on which tag to use for a concept half the time, so you end up with multiple tags for the same thing, which sort of defeats it ... - Michele Neylon

Yeah, they are useful for comedic effect, but not much else. At least not on friendfeed. - Alex Scoble

#hashtagsaredead - Ryan Kuder

If Yahoo would get off it's duff and imbue Delicious with some statusness and conversationalizingness, we wouldn't need to hack Twitter with hastags. Then again, if Twitter would separate out tags and links from 140 characters, we wouldn't need Delicious. - Kawika Holbrook

Steve: right, but I bet that Twitter gets conversation threading eventually and Facebook already has better ways to tag content. - Robert Scoble

And, anyway, since friendfeed is an addon to Twitter, in this respect (this post went to Twitter) we get grouping of common items here. No hashtag needed. Oh, and you can search on any word in any of these comments and find this thread. - Robert Scoble

what is the percentage of 100% accuracy with hash tags? how many people who do know the hash actually use it? for me 'concept' filter, zeroing in on the sweet spot is best (for me) take #swf09 - how many people who were twittering about the Skoll World Forum 09 actually got it, used it most of the time? some of the time? only once? Skoll seems pretty right on to me, so i just filter Skoll - unique enough to pluck it out of the stream. Gets much more difficult with wider targets but can be done with + or - - michael sean wright

Don't count Twitter hashtags out yet...they came in handy in our local situation here in Australia. We did have one slight problem with some teenage bright spark hijacking the #bushfires stuff to a @bushfires group. Otherwise it was still very active for us back in February. Hashtags highly relevant in emergency situations. How they work on FriendFeed, someone else will have to tell me about. - George Hall (Australia)

"user tagging" will keep being relevant until machines can infer these tags themselves. They really can't at this moment. Normal search engines are still doing keyword-matching. - Meryn Stol

#bitchtlips will live forever - sofarsoShawn

So you're at a conference where you've never met half of the folks there. Sure you know your friends at table and have access to their feeds, but what about the table two over? If they don't use the name of the conference, your name, the name of the speaker or something that orients the feed toward the common experience, how will you know what's being said? The hashtag still seems relevant in that context. - Michael Sommermeyer

Did they ever have value? Twitter Search is certainly set up not to need them so long as you just use a common identifier term. - Pete Mortensen

# not dead until I can click on any word in a post and get the search results. only hash'd words are clickable. - John Treadway

They are dead because they were always stupid and because people make them up and other people can never find them I HOPE they are dead. - Francine Hardaway

Pete: yeah, they did, especially for events. That way everyone would see you are explicitly wanting to join the tag for that event. - Robert Scoble

Used to be a good way of 'tagging' keywords for easy search. But if the common subject is mentioned clearly in a conversation (eg. 'social media' vs #socialmedia) then agree, its days are numbered. Particularly the trend as online conversationalists move beyond Twitter. - schmediachick

I just lost a fight with Twitter search and http://tr.im today, trying in vain to locate an old link I forgot to ALSO save on Delicious. Even FriendFeed is fallow when it comes to historical organization. I miss Swurl's calendar-based timelines. This is so "in the moment" that there doesn't seem to be as much attention paid to "where's that link from that thing that happened last month that I now need for something coming up this very moment." - Kawika Holbrook

Kawika how do you use delicious in junction with Twitter? - Bryan Lee

Michael: conferences in the future will embed a friendfeed thread in their sites. Look at how many comments are here. Watch this live. It's amazing. - Robert Scoble

There's still some use of hashtags on Twitter and a few other services. Others have something similar to hashtags, which you might consider the same. But for the most part, I have to agree: hashtags are dying, and the reason for that is because we're getting much better with searching and filtering content. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

http://beta.friendfeed.com/scoblei... Here's the permalink for this item. Once you have that you can watch all the comments flow in live and you do NOT need hashtags anymore. - Robert Scoble

Hash tags enable intelligent indexing of Twitter. And (not so) subtle humor. #ScobleIsWrongAgain :-) - Brent Logan

Brent: Twitter is dead. Because if you want REAL indexing in live time of a conversation about a social object this is WAY BETTER than Twitter. - Robert Scoble

Keyword matching on the message is really not up to par with what's possible with tagging. - Meryn Stol

Meryn: you are absolutely wrong. Here, search on this in the next minute or so: foopoo - Robert Scoble

foopoo is already indexed in search. Wow. http://beta.friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

Hashtags dead because no clearinghouse on what they mean. They get co-opted and perverted to generate follows and reads. And Twitter search tools have improved massively in short time. Readable tags take up too much of my 140. Short ones are not obvious. - Wilford

Hashtags are now most likely used just to get more followers in same interest if that even!. I have seen people misuse hashtags , for example "I Love my dog #iphone" wtf has dog to do with an iphone or how much you love your dog.... you know what I mean? Anyways i use tweetgrid.com for clearing things out and don't pay attention to tweetdeck or so to say twitscoop anymore. - Live Crunch Blog

What a cool way to get help writing your blog post... where were you earlier today when I was having brainfreeze? - Kathy Colaiacovo

Well I think the foopoo example sorta ended this argument - Matsis

Yes, that's keyword matching. So what's the big deal? Hashtags are merely a way to add keywords to a piece of content the "#" denotes that it should not be read as part of a sentence, but that they are just some extra keywords. - Meryn Stol

So using Friendfeed with twitter eliminates the need for hashtags, essentially? - Derek Schauland

Kathy: everything changes now that we have live display. - Robert Scoble

God, does it ever! - Kathy Colaiacovo

Kathy: everything changes now that we have live indexing. - Robert Scoble

Derek: yes. - Robert Scoble

Matsis: foopoo was indexed in less than five seconds. It used to take a minute for the indexer to work. Freaking amazing. - Robert Scoble

but this requires a single source? hashtags come from lots of places. - Jonathan Hopkins

Live / non-live is a separate issue. Hash-tags might not be real-time also... - Meryn Stol

and you get so used to it! I was on a live chat (supposedly) last week - but they were moderating the comments... and the delay was so annoying to most of the participants. It's an on-demand world now - Kathy Colaiacovo

Meryn: you aren't getting it. If you want to create a tag, you can do it here. I just created foopoo and now search works on that. No need to create an ugly tag. - Robert Scoble

Hashtags are pretty much just tags for your tweets - Chris Martin

Sweet sweet the live view works on the iPhone! - Bryan Lee

Wrong: I like making up really fun & zany ones: #robertscobleshotshit!WHoo!!!!!YEAH!!!!!!WootWOOT!!!!!!!! - sofarsoShawn

There's only one reason for hashtags now: To mark something as being related to something else not explicitly mentioned in a post, and point out that marking. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

And, because our conversation here is grouped all together you don't need a hashtag to create a thread. - Robert Scoble

I hate this "this is dead, that is dead" crap. They work for some things, for others they don't. Move along people there's nothing to see here. - Jeremy Armer

Twitter does real-time search just fine. Anything you type in a tweet, including "foopoo" can be searched on. - Meryn Stol

I do agree though - searches have changed and the # seems irrelevant now. - Kathy Colaiacovo

Robert, "Twitter is dead" is a different argument than hash tags are dead. FriendFeed is a different animal with it's own advantages and disadvantages, but as long as Twitter is alive, so will be hash tags. - Brent Logan

If you can work in what you'd tag as context into your actual post, you don't need hashtags. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

By the way I still am wondering why Gabe Rivera didn't add LC for aggregation on techmeme, even tho atul and other ppl are sending tips to #techmeme - Live Crunch Blog

Brent: Not true. Twitter's real-time search means hash tags aren't needed for Twitter either. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

hashtags are a hack. I've been saying this forever: http://staynalive.com/article... - Jesse Stay

Brent: Twitter will copy friendfeed. Mark my words. If they don't, Twitter is dead. - Robert Scoble

The concept is good (esp. for event listings) - but there needs to be ONE place to go to register them so you don't end up with 10 other ppl using yours. But it is out of control on Twitter - some people have 3 in every post - where is the content? - Robyn Hawk

jeremy: saying something is "dead" causes you to pay attention. Sorry, but this is provable and is why this technique is used so often. - Robert Scoble

Here in the Portland Oregon areas we use #pdxtst (Portland Twitter Storm Team) to tweet about weather conditions. No form of search can replace it. - Brent Logan

Hashtags served their purpose early on and were the tool of Twitterati in the know. It's like anything that trends... It's cool until the grown-ups arrive. And now with Twitter's growth, the grown-ups have indeed arrived. Once the grown-ups arrive and start using something to forward an agenda it dies. - matt

Brent: you could just include pdxtst in a message. you can find it by doing a search for it. - Robert Scoble

Robert, I hope Twitter does adopt FriendFeed style conversations. I still see value in hash tags. - Brent Logan

http://beta.friendfeed.com/search... Here's all items with pdxtst included in them. - Robert Scoble

http://beta.friendfeed.com/filter... pdxtst filter - Christian Burns

Hashtags are machine language which is unnecessary. I talked about it last week. http://www.louisgray.com/live... - Louis Gray

Robert, in other words, you'd prefer I embedded gibberish in my messages for search purposes, just don't prepend them with a hash? - Brent Logan

now you tell me... - Ecosaveology

Excellent point John - it is convenient to be able to click on the hashtag words! - Robyn Hawk

Hashtags can be useful if everyone in the group that uses them agrees on a single tag. Poeplebrowsr makes interesting use of them by making groups ot of the people that use them. But, as said above #mosthastagsaresilly just ask the #hashtagmafia ;) #jesseisrighttheyareahack - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Brent: tell me how this would be improved if everyone had to post #hashtagdiscussion to join in this comment thread? Note that you don't need to do that anymore to have your comment grouped with other people's on a common topic. - Robert Scoble

I think hashtags must be ironic #butyouknewthat - Alan Thornton

Scoble but the search results doesn't have a live view or doesn't poll like Twitter search. - Bryan Lee

Bryan: yeah, I know. That's getting fixed by the friendfeed team. We asked about that last week at the press conference. - Robert Scoble

Also once someone has entered the tag into a discussion, and then I comment or like it, It's part of my discussions page - Christian Burns

Bryan Lee, I attempt to tag articles I like for posterity in Delicious and then -- if they may be of interest to others -- share them in Twitter. The former is indexed storage and the latter is quick conversation. I stills struggle with Twitter and FriendFeed as a repository of knowledge and sentiment. Hashtags were meant to give some structure to Twitter. Ultimately, however, it still feels like the Wild West. - Kawika Holbrook

Imagine if every post on here had to include #hashtagsRdead - Christian Burns

Robert, you're missing my point. Tags are very useful for searching topics, even in the absence of a continuing conversation. It's author-intended indexing. Blog posts use tags. They just have a special field for doing it. If FriendFeed or Twitter allowed for a special tag field, I'd love it. It would be prettier than hash tags. But it hasn't happened yet, so calling hash tags dead is premature. - Brent Logan

Brent: yes, but see I would only have to put a hashtag at the top node, and everyone does NOT need to include the hashtag individually anymore to join in. - Robert Scoble

Robert, I agree. Hash tags are ugly for enabling conversations. That's not their only purpose, though. - Brent Logan

Brent: I just changed the headline that started this to include a hashtag. - Robert Scoble

Robert: or someone could insert the hashtag into just one of the comments - Christian Burns

Sorry, I'm a little confused. This is like a chat room. A hashtag on Twitter is aggregating independent thoughts, no? Apples and oranges? - Catherine Ventura

Ha! #ScobleizerIsFunny - Brent Logan

The one purpose they really do server at this point, Robert is to make a searchable term out of a more commonly used word so that search does NOT pull up unintended tweets. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

kawika never thought to share my delicious links on Twitter. I just have friendfeed handle that. - Bryan Lee

Here's the search that pulls up all items with the tag #hashtagsaredead http://beta.friendfeed.com/search... See, now no body needs to include that hashtag in their comment to be grouped in here. On Twitter they'd still need to use the hashtag. Oh, and notice how I can add a tag AFTER the fact to make something more searchable here! - Robert Scoble

Wait... hashtags are dead? What about !groups and @#tagfamilies?? - Ken Sheppardson

Never used them or liked them. Get more results searching for normal words because no one actually remembers to add the hashtag - BCK

Hashtags are very useful in lots of different contexts (local, relevance, mimicking behavior), but they are not the sole method and definitely not intuitive enough for mass adoption - Tiffany Winman

Meh. #scoblesayingitdoesntmakeittrue - Suburban Oblivion

Robert, imagine a TV channel wants to start a live discussion on twitter. It says: "guys, use the hashtag #xxx". Now, it can watch only updates with this hashtag; making just a live search for "xxx" would be false - there would be so much noise. - Konstantin

Ken LOL - Jesse Stay

They're not dead. Yea, you could save a character by not using the # sign, but that could lead to confusion depending on what the tag is. Same with not using @ before someone's username... fine if you're @Scobleizer, not so fine if you're @John. On Laconi.ca, you can subscribe to hashtags (different from subscribing to a keyword), which is convenient for event attendees. - Marina Martin

Catherine: Twitter is a chat room too. Just because it doesn't look like one doesn't mean it isn't. It's been a chat room for me for years. - Robert Scoble

Marina, you can use ! to exclude items I believe - Jesse Stay

Marina: OK, they are dead for a lot of things that they are being used for today, but not totally dead. :-) - Robert Scoble

Dead or dying? I'm usually late to most trends so if I haven't started yet it's probably not dead. Maybe. - CAJ, somewhere else

Marina: notice how i changed the headline here to be more accurate. That's something you can't do on Twitter, either. (refresh this page). - Robert Scoble

Robert: Touche! But its a very big room... and this is a dedicated closet - Catherine Ventura

Robert I don't understand this. maybe it's late and I'm being silly but hashtags are to bring together lots of people in one place. this is a single thread, started by you. - Jonathan Hopkins

Catherine: Oh, we can start lots of offshoots. - Robert Scoble

Jonathan: this is lots of people "in one place." No difference. This is like me saying "here's a hashtag" let's talk. - Robert Scoble

Posted my thoughts on this: http://coldacid.net/blog... (Did I beat you to it, Robert?) - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

It's machine language. Don't understand why people use it -- Twitter's trend algorithm catches keywords with or without hashtags. I just do it because it's funny. #WhoCares. :) - Mona Nomura

but it's a place created by one person. hashtags help create a single place, created by lots of people no? - Jonathan Hopkins

I'm digging this live view can't wait till it's out of beta! - Bryan Lee

Jonathan: OK, I get that. So, go start another thread on friendfeed and post the URL here. Now we'll have two places all tied together. No hashtag needed. - Robert Scoble

I agree w/ Brent that Twitter should just include a field for 2 or 3 tags and not count it toward the 140 char limit. I guess this would break the SMS functionality though. Then again, they're not clickable in text messages so they're just taking up space in most SMS messages anyway. - Jeremy Armer

Chris: you beat me. I might not even do a blog post. :-) Maybe blogs are dead too! :-) - Robert Scoble

Since we ARE talking hashtags, one thing I WOULD like to see is something in the Twitter system NOT reading anything hashtagged as part of the 140-character limit. Again, where that helps is in emergency uses of Twitter and other micro-blogging apps. More room for the real information, and meaning you could use more than one hashtag. Anyone thought of that before today? - George Hall (Australia)

Jeremy: Twitter will never do THAT. Why? Because it makes Twitter far more complex. - Robert Scoble

George: that would be a cool way to handle hashtags. Too bad that Twitter is still chasing scaling problems and not able to use its developers for building new features. They will fix that eventually, though. - Robert Scoble

Robert: Agreed, simplicity is Twitter's "killer app". - Jeremy Armer

Robert: Blogs aren't dead, yet. Wait for FriendFeed to uncap the length of a post and add inline links and images. :D - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

;-) For sure - but then I have to post the URL back in here - a hashtag does that automatically. with or without the # - having one word to unify distributed content is useful right? focus should be on search and the language we are creating together on here. friendfeed, twitter, whatever - this is all the groundwork for the language of the live web, no? PS good chat, loving this view on FF - Jonathan Hopkins

ROBERT! LOL!! - Mona Nomura

Robert: And I'd suggest write up a post anyway. You do a much better job at blogging than I do, and probably have a different viewpoint. Even if it's only a little different, it helps expand everyone's view of the matter. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Robert, you hit the nail on the head. Anytime Twitter is used for anything other than sending and replying to messages, it complicates the intended simplicity. I've only seen hashtags work great in intimate settings, but on bigger scales, it loses it's desired effects. - Mike Lewis

Jonathan: You have a point there. The "@user" convention has spread far beyond Twitter. - Jeremy Armer

Hash tags are still useful on Twitter because not all posts concerning a particular subject contain the subject in question. Not everybody follows everybody on Twitter so using hash tags is a good way to find those subjects. Smaller groups use hash tags to coordinate their conversations and make search easier. - Aulia Masna

Hash tags aren't dead. If anything I think they are growing. I've seen more people using them since the election that before. - ChiliMac

Chris: you tease you. I can't wait for the day I can put a 4,000-word blob up into friendfeed. Jonathan: you really don't need to even put the URL back in here. You just need to use the same word or set of words in the top level to join them together. For instance, why write #w2e when you really just mean "I'm attending the Web 2.0 Expo." Here, search on Web 2.0 Expo now and see what happens. - Robert Scoble

Here's a search for "Web 2.0 Expo." http://beta.friendfeed.com/search... Notice that I didn't need to use a lame ass hashtag to join together lots of conversations. - Robert Scoble

fundamentally a hashtag eliminates more than it adds. using #wine eliminates confusing a convo about wines with "love the new wine colored lipstick" - Catherine Ventura

Hashtags were always a kluge. Threading + fabulous search makes them unnecessary. - Eric Johnson

uhhh... what's a kluge? - Catherine Ventura

While I'm in a talkative mood today...giving the Australian bushfires back in February as an example, we utilized hashtags thusly: #bushfires for main general information. #vicfires and #nswfires for the information relevant to the two states which had bushfires at that time, Victoria and New South Wales. #fireupdates for more specific types of info. #firecomments for condolence messages, keeeping them off the main hashtags. We tended to treat the hashtags more like channels back then. - George Hall (Australia)

Catherine: that's a good point. But if you are talking about wine, you probably have some modifiers that make sense. So if I search for "wine and merlot" I bet I will only get back discussions about wine, not about lipstick. Also, friendfeed lets you search for "wine" and then subtract out anything that mentions lipstick. - Robert Scoble

OK thanks! - bit clearer now. Twitter does the same thing without #tags but crucial difference is the presentation of results as individual tweets versus conversation threads you can jump into. - Jonathan Hopkins

Catherine: here's a search for all items that include the word "wine" but that do NOT include the word "lipstick." http://beta.friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

Robert, your "foopoo" example IS a tag without a designator as tag. The purpose of a #tag isn't to FIND, but to TELL others where something is to be found. It's an ad hoc channel, not a query. - Shoq

Kluge = a clunky work-around. A hack. But there's still so much blurt going on on Twitter that hashtags will be with us for some time yet, I'll bet. - Eric Johnson

In fact, this item is NOT included in that search because it includes the word "lipstick." Friendfeed filtering really rocks and we haven't even started using it yet. - Robert Scoble

BUT - using a #tag is a way of someone labeling their content because they want it to be found, rather than letting someone just find it. Plus - it helps fuel pre-filtered (to some extent, minus the spam/opportunists) feeds to be mashed up with other stuff - Jonathan Hopkins

Shoq: I sort of got that. Which is why I included an official hashtag in my headline above. That way you can see that we're specifically going to tag things here. Also, it will let Twitterers use that tag and join in the conversation. - Robert Scoble

By the way, Robert, I claim first dibs the idea on having hashtags outside the 140-character limit. - George Hall (Australia)

Robert: nice, but identical to google, fundamentally, and we have to anticipate that wine is a fashion forward lipstick color. But what if it's your street name? Or your last name? Or you are mispelling the sound your children make when they want to watch TV? I wouldn't write off the power of the "secret decoder ring" magic of a hashtag just yet... - Catherine Ventura

Jonathan: if I want you to find a conversation about wine I bet it will be found if I just discuss wine. Here, let's see if this works. Damn, it does work: http://beta.friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

so wine is the hashtag (just without the #) ;) . . . . . - Jonathan Hopkins

Catherine: well, if I do a search for wine and find lipstick I know something is wrong and Google has already trained me to try a different search. :-) How many people know how Google works? Billions. How many people know about hashtags? Maybe 20 million. - Robert Scoble

And thanks for saying "doesn't mean it's dead." But anyway, so if the tag does dual duty, it's not dead, but merely being reassigned to a more useful and formalized role. - Shoq

Jonathan: now you're getting why I realized that hashtags are dead, or at least, a whole lot less relevant from now on. I still might use them here and there, but I am not forced to, like I am on Twitter, to join a conversation together. - Robert Scoble

Robert: pretty good. only anomaly was an appliance list by stephanie with a "wine cooler" - Catherine Ventura

Catherine: here, let's get rid of the cooler: http://beta.friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

Robert: pretty good but there were some crystal wine glasses. Still, impressive... - Catherine Ventura

Um, sort of . . . i think though there will always be a 'word' that people agree to use to lump content together and help each other identify it without question from other content that *might* be relevant. But, yep -=reckon we agree that there's no real need for the # anymore. so, it comes down to tags then - which is all over the web and that comes back to my thoughts re the fact we are just creating a live web language together here. And well done you for getting conversations like this going . . . ! - Jonathan Hopkins

I think #hashtags, like Tweets, are amorphous and will be used by people how they need/want to use them. - Jeremy Armer

Maybe it's not death but evolution? Hashtags were useful in the way they were used in Twitter (and well before that). Technology and knowhow have improved to practically make a tagless hash. I could search for the word "the" if I wanted to. Or perhaps "teh" but who would ever think to hashtag that? - CAJ, somewhere else

Jeremy: That's exactly what I think - Chris Martin

Chris: you can edit comments (or delete them) if you make a mistake. I can delete them too, under items that I started. So, I'll delete your extra one in a few seconds if you don't. - Robert Scoble

Okay, now what about getting a specific date range in FF searches? Specific format? - George Hall (Australia)

Tags define a community. Those #Tcot and #teaparty and #idol people cannot be served by an arbitrary "track" query. They are both tools with very different uses. - Shoq

Oh, THAT is another reason why hashtags are dead: they will be used by spammers. But HERE we can delete and block spammers. - Robert Scoble

Wait. Robert are you saying you can censor the comments you don't like? Interesting! - CAJ, somewhere else

Shoq: good point. Alan: yes, I can. But I won't. Can you guess why I won't censor your comments? - Robert Scoble

Cuz you like people's opinions, even if they're different? Because you're not China? I give. - CAJ, somewhere else

Robert: Because he would start a "Scoble censors FF comments!" thread? - Jeremy Armer

At least we've lost the old IRC commands, like /join #Scoble - Catherine Ventura

hashtags are often misused or abused - Kim Landwehr

Hashtags are great when you are having a conversation on Twitter on a topic. Dead? Hardly. Lots of people are just figuring them out. And while plenty of techies know how to filter and use friend feed for conversations, face it, it's the minority of users. - Peggy Dolane

You can also "censor" out/block spammers in Twitter, too. It's only on your particular computer, so everyone else still sees the annoyances. - George Hall (Australia)

Jeremy is right: http://beta.friendfeed.com/scoblei... - Robert Scoble

i never know what are the right hashtags to use - Nicholas

The spam issue is probably the best argument against them. I can block spammers on Twitter but I can't stop them from littering all over tags I watch. Nick: I never know the right ones either. - Jeremy Armer

I can see Robert's point, though. One of the things that killed off Yahoo Groups was the fact they eventually filled with spambots, etc. Now that's all you ever find in a Yahoo chat room - George Hall (Australia)

Another advantage of the known tag signifier is that people can decide on the fly what attentions they want to route an item to without an interface. - Shoq

right. the yahoo groups were fixed. less flexible. We can still, in effect, say, "quick, go to channel 3"... - Catherine Ventura

the point about spammers spoiling hash tags is valid -- however they only seem to be a real problem for trending topics, smaller group conversations appear to be immune thus far in my experience. - Peggy Dolane

George, that is true about chat, but the follow concept alters that paradigm significantly. You can determine who is in the flow, to some extent, and even enough extent for many people (as some like the noise seepage that gets in.) - Shoq

so what about 'invisible #tags' that don't form part of your 140? much like tags in blog posts only even less visible without clicking through. Other stuff could be added . . . location, mood, timezone, authority, etc etc - all improving search results using the meta data manually/automatically assigned to your tweets/comments/threads whatever - Jonathan Hopkins

Jonathan: I think the main issue w/ that is the 140 character simplicity is what makes it so customizable. I can make a Twitter app that works any way I want. When features get added, it complicates the process and narrows the possibilities. - Jeremy Armer

Jonathan, all true, but not while anyone is pretending to live within the 160 SMS limitation (twitter reserves 20 for name). That's the problem there. - Shoq

Jeremy: for sure. Simplicity is key - it's what it doesn't do etc . . . but I reckon there's a few things that will need to be done to deal with the scale and maintain value for everyone. - Jonathan Hopkins

That proves the power of a thread. It's getting interestingly long. In my view, hashtags are cool, but they're represented here as the post's thread itself (that could've been with some tagging-system prior to filtering). The hashtag could've been treated as a shortener, as "This post went to FF #ff51x32" but FriendFeed went for that by linking to the discussion itself so. Hashtags are nice to explore the twitter world as you can find, I'm sure, any of those used words for any case. - ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,

Jonathan: it's like back in the day when you called someone collect and they refused to pay. It was a free call to signal something. With an 'invisible' hashtag, I could technically write a very long tweet. #sothisishowtogetaroundthelimitof140characterstakethattwitter. :) - CAJ, somewhere else

Shoq: definitely Alan: ;-) - Jonathan Hopkins

Alan, I'd really love to see that long a hashtag actually work in a Twitter client... - George Hall (Australia)

Everyone wants the 140 do more. I think they're great. They force concision, point to payload, and all but crush feature-creep. We shouldn't call them "updates." They're "headers." - Shoq

Well, I tried #testtoseehowlongahashtagcanbeandificanactuallyuseupallthecharactersthatareallowedwillnotusepunctuationtobreakanythingupjustincaseicannot and it allowed it. Of course...I used up my character limit. - CAJ, somewhere else

twirl, btw. Jus' sayin'. - CAJ, somewhere else

Doesn't really matter if things are hashtagged or not in the grand scheme of searching capabilities. - Elizabeth Parmeter

I liked how you got that #hashtagfromhellandback to go outside the lines Alan. #nicework #deservesprize - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Shoq: I agree, w/o the 140 character limit most Tweets would be as boring as most blogs are. - Jeremy Armer

Rob: That was surprisingly hard to type. I'm WAY too used to proper punctuation, spacing, etc. No wonder I'm enjoying FF! - CAJ, somewhere else

I'm still noticing one thing with the FriendFeed searches...if I want a set of feeds from a specific date, I'm still scratching my head on how to do that. Merely inputing one single time like "Feb. 7 only brings up anything with that date in the title or text, not what I specifically want, which is all feeds in that search ON or between certain dates. - George Hall (Australia)

George: that's a good feature request. - Robert Scoble

Egad, my second bright idea of the day... - George Hall (Australia)

But it's a clear need. Can't find anything in the FriendFeed search that helps pin down specific periods. If I want to look back over feeds from all the first week of February, at present it's go through heaps of back pages or hit and miss. That's a much-need feature. - George Hall (Australia)

George: It is indeed. Suggest it in friendfeed-feedback and friendfeed-beta, hopefully Paul & co. will add it (and sooner rather than later). - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Alan: I totally understand. I have a hard time with just tweets, because I like to be clear, and as well "spoken" as possible, and like to use punctuation to provide emphasis that would be the if I spoke what I wrote. But I do appreciate how character limits get me to think in shorter, more powerful phrases. (LinkedIn profile was WAY hard to do!) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

To Chris...suggested it in Feedback. Done. - George Hall (Australia)

#hashtags are inanimate objects. how can they be dead... or alive? ;-P - .LAG liked that

George: Awesome! LAG: Oh, you... :D - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Hash Tags will continue to be useful for groups of people - paul mooney

Adequate search capabilities make any form of tagging irrelevant. - rob friedman

keyword is "adequate." I find that unless a search facility can take into account synonyms (as Google's can) it's probably not going to be adequate. My biggest problem: searching for "mission" and coming up with diplomatic missions, or searching for "missionary" and NOT coming up with religious work, but something vastly different! - Justin Long

Well only the smart people it seems know to quantify their search by using the primary search term, and then 2-4 or more words which help narrow things down. Let's not search for root latin words in google. - rob friedman from twhirl

A generic search will yield a generic result. A more thought out search query is likely to yield something specific or nothing at all. - rob friedman from twhirl

Are there any hard numbers on the use of hashtags on Twitter over the last twelve months? A simple trendline graph? - Sean McBride

Fascinating that something "dead" can inspire such a discussion! ;) Srsly though, when I came up with hashtags (http://tr.im/fj_hashtags) they were proposed as a way to provide on-the-go context with zero overhead. If your tag got picked up and used, great! If not, welcome to the longtail! I find hashtags useful in heterogeneous/cross-network situations --or via SMS when conference wifi sucks. They were never intended as a final solution, but as a convenient, transparent stop-gap, still find them useful. - Chris Messina

Also, consider how #pman was used to stage protests in Maldova: http://tr.im/maldova. They didn't use FriendFeed groups for that. - Chris Messina

I'm quite happy to do a search w/o hash tags. Sometimes, I have to OR several possible terms, but it doesn't particularly bother me. - Seth Greenblatt

Hashtags can be useful for including descriptive metadata about text which is not evident in the text itself. There are many valuable uses that should be evident if one gives the matter a moment's thought. - Sean McBride

By the way, where's that guy who thought nobody uses FriendFeed? He's proven wrong again. Do we have a hashtag for him? - George Hall (Australia)

George: #arringtonyoufool :D - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

The best reason to use hashtags are for sarcastic remarks #Icantfindmysockssoitmustbemonday - Matthew Sauer

Matt: we need you in the #hashtagmafia #natualhashman #jointhefun - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Chris Messina--thanks for jumping in with some sanity. ;-). Trying to make a call on what's dead is dead, so lets stop. As long as 140-character text messages continue to dominate and grow, hashtags will always be around. Folks like to annotate (that is, add metadata) things and hashtags are a lightweight, simple way to do that. If anything, Maldova should be a wake-up call regarding this. Hey--what about best practices about how, when and when not to use hashtags? - Albert Willis

Whoa! Slow down the # hate train! While I acknowledge that its a lazy way of finding and grouping content for human search and consumption, I use them extensively within the enterprise to aggregate content for knowledge management purposes. Lets not start the "just say no" campaign just yet. - jcunwired

It's not about #hashtags, it's about structured metadata for the Semantic Web, of which hashtags are just a small subset and primitive type. Why Robert Scoble is probably wrong about this: let him name a search engine which can identify and separate the pro-hashtag from the anti-hashtag comments in this discussion. #hashtags+ - Sean McBride

Ok so if they're dead then why are people still using them? And is there really a replacement that can work just as well? (No, friendfreed groups don't count since it's outside of Twitter). Twitter Search does to some degree, but hashtags are great to group content that may not have mentioned a searchable term otherwise. - R. Alexander Spoerer

I think short and useful hashtags will be great for taxonomy of microblogging. - Alp

I think hashtags are what FF needs to incorporate to make the filters truly useful. Allow community tagging (with approval) and you get more useful organizing of data. Search for Roku vs. #Roku to get an idea. - Kevin Kuphal

"Rooms" can be used for tagging. Any message can be addressed to one or more rooms as well as your public feed. FriendFeed is different from Twitter in the sense that you can post messages to rooms without posting it your own feed. On Twitter, everything appears in your own feed. It's a must. - Meryn Stol

sms compatible public micromessages are the tightest, most basic communications platform we have. it is only going to become more ubiquitous. in-line tags indicate relevance, and allow for permission-less participation in something while you are typing. they are human-prefiltering and they can be used anywhere you type. this is only going to become more important overtime. this is standards level not service level issue. search and in-line tags will co-exist and integrate together. - Michael Lewkowitz

Excellent analysis by Michael Lewkowitz. Robert needs to reexamine this subject. - Sean McBride

oh I thought hashtags were being celebrated in growing semantic web - is that not the case any more? #hashtagsaredead - Julian Edward

Julian -- Robert had a sudden gust of "inspiration." :) - Sean McBride

I didn't know people were using hashtags for conversations. What I like tags for is so you can browse a pre-existing taxonomy of what people find important at a concept level. Tag clouds. You can't do a general word cloud because there's too many and it takes too much semantic knowledge to map to equivalence classes. By a community using RoR, for example, as a tag then you can browse and easily find all Ruby on Rails posts without already having to know all possible forms of RoR. - Todd Hoff

I think its on the way but we're not there yet. If you search for a term on twitter and dont use a hash, then you will get thousands of minor relevant terms. Using hash tags at least lets the educated user let you know the central theme of the tweet. (i really do hate that term, so i must be getting old). Sites like friendfeed are setting the standard for true real time search... more... - James Ketchell

Hashtags cut through a massive amount of irrelevant clutter. - Sean McBride

In an extremely inefficient way that also looses a lot of relevant items. - JP Maxwell

It doesn't lose any relevant items -- one is free to search on the full text of documents in tandem with metadata. - Sean McBride

Hashtags aren't necessary in a world of full-text indexing, but they impose a small amount of keyword discipline. And they make it a lot easier to track a multi-part conversation. I think as Twitter grows they become much more useful. - Jeff Newfeld

So I guess what we're agreeing here is that hashtags are de-hashed, we use tags or keywords. Just like we did before Twitter appeared. - Jon Lebkowsky

I agree with jeff. It differentiates text search from what the actual content is about. I don't wanna search all text, justbyhose conversations that are relvant to this subject. And follow Friday is an excellent example of this. - Roberto Bonini

To many people are looking at hashtags in the context of a a FriendFeed user. But hashtags are only relevant in the Twitter world. A # tag give a 1 charecter symbol letting whom ever is reading the tweet that the following charracters represent a search/subject term. This prevents confusion. Look at it this way if I ending a tweet with "Robert Scoble" people might thing I'm directing my... more... - ChiliMac

Wow so much to sort through however I have to completely disagree in the context of Twitter usage. IMO, hashtags are not dead. Their use and purpose has just evolved. They are no longer relevant for search however are a mechanism for grouping. Pitch a topic and a hashtag will naturally form to focus the topic and keep conversation on point. - Rob Jensen

I think they just help people search. Click on the hashtag and see the search. Otherwise keywords are searchable in any event with the hashtag. - Bill Romanos

tags won't die. hashtags might, tho. - MikeAmundsen

I keep forgetting to use hashtags. People should just search for keywords of interest to them. - Morton Fox

A recent hashtag, #iagaymarriage, is being used effectively for information exchange, meetings, etc. Here, it's very efficient to agree on a single term for this purpose. - Stan Scott

I never really used them. - Ernie Oporto

If everyone comes to a spontaneous consensus about a hashtag (e.g. #followfriday), it works. Hashtags start out used by a few and get adopted by more...if it's useful and makes sense. - CAJ, somewhere else

Hash tags are speaking machine language - Jeremiah Owyang

germans still love them - kosmar

Tagging tweets has for a long time been something I thought would add value to Twitter. Hashtags may be a convenient solution for some to organize conversations, but they're 1) ugly and 2) take up space. Being able to tag tweets would empower Search.Twitter. Many users may think hashtags are the same as tags, but tags offer true metadata. It would be in Twitter's interest to roll out tagging sooner rather than later imo. - phil baumann

http://hashtags.org are not dead. Far from it. Happy #followfriday!! - Garin Kilpatrick

hashtags should be dead. they're space-consuming and redundant. - Karoli

Not to mention the work that goes into making them uniform for a particular event. Small I know, but still an issue. - Angela

yeah, I've never really been able to get into 'em... the #followfriday one is the only one I've been able to ever type... - Krikit Media

I still think people are too lazy to remember to work their keyword into a post on Twitter and while this feed stream is cool, I don't see how every event will remember to create a FF stream on their website. Plus, how do I pick up on that if I'm sitting in room with only my BlackBerry or iPhone? It's kind of essential to be able to use these tools in the form their were intended at the moment. Twitter is SMS. FF is a web stream. #BlackBerry #iPhone #FF #Twitter #socialmedia #haveipissedyouoffyet? - Michael Sommermeyer

Robert, PLEASE write up a post on this and deflect some of this criticism that keeps getting heaped on me. I don't think I explained it well enough and my misinterpretations seems to have gotten a lot of peoples' knives out. :( - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Chris If you get people to take their knives out then you got a reaction. That's the most any writer can hope for. - MarkCarras

a) Threaded convos like this can be too much. This is what I expect to see when I visit a hashtag page, blog, or forum. The rest of the time, I'm content to see thoughts of people I sub to. b) These judgments seem to be based on twitter implementation. hashes ~link~ in identica. if one is used, you can click it, skim what others are saying, then return to your stream. They also build clouds: Public Clouds, Profile Clouds, & Group Clouds. One glance gives an instant feel for what's on peoples' minds. - exador23

c) I believe hashtags are just a step toward semantic linking. The !bangtag (for identica groups) takes another small step: as used, it's essentially a ~subscribeable~ hashtag, delivered real-time to your personal stream when used. Eventually I hope the # & ! will be hidden. It's the ~link~ that's important, the char is for SW. Hopefully the final step will be the SW links for you. My 2c. peace. - exador23

sorry. figured I should give an example. Imagine the ! and #'s are gone & you just have the links: http://identi.ca/notice... And how useful is it to have metadata like this when considering if you want to follow someone: http://pikchur.com/iso Note these clouds evolve continually & each tag is a link. - exador23

Curious. Considering Jeremiah's point about writing machine language and Robert's suggestion that hashtags are dead (in the context of search), should @replies also be killed off? I mean, the @username convention is useful, but super nerdy. Shouldn't we just move to full/real names? - Chris Messina

but both # and @ tags both show intention, which natural language doesn't. - ryan