Re: Feature Request: Hastags
I guess @ and # works great for people who understand it. Just like a UNIX prompt works great for people who know how to use it. So no harm including that ability for those folks. But I don’t know. I think the average user would be confused. And the average user is not on Twitter. So it would be new to them.
The other thing is, you’re relying on raw text strings for this functionality give good results. If you type @davelewis or @david lewis or @davidlouis… I won’t see your mention of me. I think there’s probably a better way. A more foolproof and friendly ‘point and click’ way. Or maybe… crazy talk here… when you type a word starting with @… an auto-complete list could popup and change as you type.
Overall though, I see the whole @ and # thing on Twitter as something that developed out of necessity due to Twitter’s severely limited functionality. It’s certainly not what made the site big I don’t think. What made it big was the fact that you could follow anyone you want and that you could do it on your cell phone. So it became a kind of world-wide MSN that you could use anywhere. Just with a radically stripped down feature set and only 140 character messages.
