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Facebook now has clickable hashtags

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Re: Facebook now has clickable hashtags

#31
post #3

A linguistic change is happening in the English language. We're adding a new class of word, the "referent case", which is signified by a # before the word. The referent case shows the topic of a sentence, just like how the nominative case shows the actor of a verb, etc. We've already added the vocative case to English with the @ grammatical marking.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook now has clickable hashtags

#32
post #10
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and it will take another 20 years before we realize that in most cases we don't really need upper case letters. now burn me for heresy.

Forgive the crudeness of the example, but there's a huge difference between the following two sentences: I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse. i had to help my uncle jack off a horse.

All languages change and have ambiguities. Modern English (with Capital Letters) has lots of ambiguities that cannot be disambiguated with capitals (e.g. "a small girls school")

Re: Facebook now has clickable hashtags

#34
post #3

A linguistic change is happening in the English language. We're adding a new class of word, the "referent case", which is signified by a # before the word. The referent case shows the topic of a sentence, just like how the nominative case shows the actor of a verb, etc. We've already added the vocative case to English with the @ grammatical marking.

it's not English language that's changing, it's human language. Hashtags represent the implicit knowledge within human communication that there is a machine observer present. Hashtags are how humans help to guide machines to behave in the way that they expect.

Re: Facebook now has clickable hashtags

#35
post #10
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and it will take another 20 years before we realize that in most cases we don't really need upper case letters. now burn me for heresy.

Forgive the crudeness of the example, but there's a huge difference between the following two sentences: I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse. i had to help my uncle jack off a horse.

"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo...

Re: Facebook now has clickable hashtags

#38
post #2

While it makes logical sense I can't help but be saddened by the further misuse of hash tagging by the clueless.

what's the proper use? I'm one of the clueless

hashtags allow the user to describe to the machine how to categorize a piece of text. So, for example, "I just stepped in shit. #winning" is a way for a user to have the sentence "I just stepped in shit" categorized in a specific way; not necessarily the way the machine would have chosen to categorize it. You're not supposed to just hashtag every word. Optimally, if another human clicks on one of your hashtags, they get to see some thematically related content. On some networks, though (Instagram in particular), hashtags are used to game the system; since there are discovery featured built around hashtags, merely including a popular hashtag can improve your visibility. So self-indulgent teens will hashtag their selfies with #food, because it's a primitive form of SEO gaming, and they wind up getting more likes. Or like with Go, people who code Go never actually call it "golang", but #golang is the canonical hashtag because it's more specific than #go, which is ... noise.

Re: Facebook now has clickable hashtags

#39
post #25
post #9

As someone who created a startup around a hashtags search engine (1), I'm very glad of this development from a business point of view - the more hashtags are used, the better. As I already wrote (2), though, I'm not sure if this is a great move for Facebook in the long run. Facebook owns the incredibly compelling core expectation of "easily sharing with friends and family through the Internet". But, for obvious reaso…

> can you be both the place where people connect with their closest connections, and where public discourse goes on? This remains to be seen. They have been working on it just in a really crash, burn and restart process way. Mark Zuckerberg once went through two options for public discourse * create a Facebook fan page * open his personal profile to public The first attempt was silently killed (from what I can see, t…

Good points, but how many people really use private groups? Aren't your friends more technically able than most people?

Personally, I connected to a lot of people of facebook for political discussions, and in the end that detracted a lot from the effectiveness of FB as a mean to stay connected with my family and closer friends...

Re: Facebook now has clickable hashtags

#40
post #7
post #3

A linguistic change is happening in the English language. We're adding a new class of word, the "referent case", which is signified by a # before the word. The referent case shows the topic of a sentence, just like how the nominative case shows the actor of a verb, etc. We've already added the vocative case to English with the @ grammatical marking.

and it will take another 20 years before we realize that in most cases we don't really need upper case letters. now burn me for heresy.

i agree! i mean, what's really wrong with typing in all lowercase?
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