How to make Twitter better using hashtags
For quite a while now, I’ve been a user of Twitter, the ‘micro blogging’ site that reminds me of how IRC used to be in the mid 90s. It’s full of people saying things with no guarantee that anyone is actually listening or caring. Just like real life!
But while it is a little fun to see the random thoughts of strangers without being forced to listen to them (you have to subscribe, or ‘follow’, someone to see their updates) it is a little annoying in that there is no easy way to track conversations or topics.
There is a method by which people are attempting to do so, called ‘hashtags’. Basically, when you write and want to specify a topic, you add a # symbol before the word that is the topic. For instance, a post about #cheese would include that symbol. The person who wants to know more about #cheese, would then go to the Twitter search function (buried at the bottom of the page) and then type in #cheese.
It’s quite intuitive, isn’t it? Did I mention that Twitter limits posts to 140 characters, including hashtags and # characters? Way to build up interactivity, am I right?
So, here’s my idea. Twitter (Inc.) should embrace the hashtag and make it a de facto part of the post. When a #hashtag is detected (by either the web client or one of the many third party apps), it should be:
- converted to a hyperlink (for instance, #cheese becomes cheese)
- converted so the # symbol becomes an invisible character both in terms of visibility and of count
Of course, this would cause issues since there would be instances wherein people would not mean to create a hashtag – they might just want to type a number symbol. This could easily be remedied by creating another function that might actually lead to a revenue method for Twitter – hashtag registration.
Any user could register a hashtag – if it already existed, they’d be shown a message indicating that fact – of course, you’d also want to make the registration of a hashtag anonymous,otherwise it becomes a Digg style free for all with people jockeying for position by creating a tag for every word in the dictionary.
By now you’re likely thinking that this seems like a ton of overkill – but when you’re designing a site that is supposed to encourage conversation, why wouldn’t you make every effort to expedite that process?
But by implementing registration, Twitter could also fulfill part of their other need: revenue. Some words, particularly copyrighted words or proper names, could be registered by their copyright holders and allowed to point back to that sponsors corporate Twitter account.
For instance, typing #doritos would lead back to the Doritos account, not just a search for the word. This is useful in two ways:
- corporations could get a handle on their branding
- users could still do normal searches but would also be able to link to an official account by making it a hashtag
- corporations could track interests in their products and determine trends
The downside would be the lack of authentication Twitter currently has regarding ownership of accounts. This would only be made worse when it came down to proving ownership, but there are numerous ways to make that a reality.
There would inevitably be abuse, but the benefits overall would be in favor of the end user.
What about the people who don’t want to see ads on their Twitter accounts? Not a problem – there are several ways to fix this:
- Allow users to opt-out of paid registered hashwords
- Allow users to block specific paid hashwords
- Charge users to block ads
What do *you* think? Reply here to comment or here to respond on Twitter.
Tags: geek stuff, twitter, unsolicited advice