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> Or what about hashtags. This is a brilliant concept invented by Chris Messina, which allowed people to group tweets from many different people into a single c

> Or what about hashtags. This is a brilliant concept invented by Chris Messina, which allowed people to group tweets from many different people into a single collection. Yeah, IRC channels never existed. I think I lost a few IQ points on this article. Are bookmarks really not a thing anymore? Is such basic browser functionality, such as back buttons and bookmarks passé today? I mean, I guess we all collectively forgot IRC ever existed. Or Usenet. Or RSS. Why not forget bookmarks exist as well. Oh right. None of that can be monetized. The internet is fucking doomed. We've moved from the promise of open networks, federated protocols, and decentralization to centralized services, advertising everywhere, and tracking your every movement to sell to the highest bidder. And people are worried Twitter might die. Yeah, it's really so sad they won't live another day to track you or sell you useless shit. Sob story of the eyeball economy, right there folks.

Karunamon 11y ago
<comment class="snarky;humorous"> Anyone who thinks that hashtags are equivalent in form or function to IRC channels is missing a few IQ points themselves. :) A hashtag is a way of grouping messages together, not a discrete conversational area with its own topic, access rules, and administrators. Can I reply back to an RSS feed? No? Then I guess that's not identical either. Can I access usenet without clunky, ancient software? Is it mobile friendly at all? No? Then I guess that's also not equivalent.
- lotyrin 11y ago
  They aren't identical, but the grandparent's argument wasn't dependent on the premise that they are. You simply can't argue there wasn't a solid history predating Twitter, across RFCs of using @name for users and #name for topics -- whether or not a topic (channel) in IRC resembles a hashtag. Also, the bit of the grandparent's rant about the decline of open channels and standards for communication (which definitely has happened) isn't diminished by adding on an explanation for why it occurred (there's no money in creating a sufficiently polished mobile UX for a decentralized service and protocol that nobody owns).
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    I'm not sure there's another way to read "IRC channels never existed then" that isn't a comparison between IRC and hashtags... Sure, there's a superficial resemblance inasmuch as a channel and a hashtag are words prefixed by a #, but that is where the similarities end. The reason open standards for communication are in decline is because nobody uses them when technically better alternatives exist. Pretty much all of Hipchat/Slack's marketing copy is a laundry list of things that IRC simply cannot do without either hacky workarounds, or at all because the protocol doesn't support it. (rant mode) Remember that vaguely-disparaging comment here when Dropbox was announced, about how you could set up the same thing with some scripts and VCS repo? We're nerds, that's fine. We're perfectly okay with getting our hands dirty. Nobody else wants to do that when there's a much simpler alternative. Including nerds, because there's a lot better way to spend our time than reinventing, the hard way, something that someone else already did. There is a need, IMO, for a nonprofit foundation that makes things like Dropbox, Hipchat, etc. but more importantly, makes them with polish, and speaking as an engineer of sorts, that means that it can't be designed by engineers. It needs to be designed to solve problems that actual users have in the way that actual users work If you have to do things like edit .conf files, twiddle services, and so forth, you've already lost. That's plenty sysadmin friendly, but krptonite to users.
    - lotyrin 11y ago
      I think you might misunderstand my comments. I don't think you and I disagree much. You seem to be reading a lot into my comment and the grandparent's, I'm not sure what agenda you might suppose we have. I don't intend to point out the (sure, we can call it superficial) use of # to denote a topic to decry Twitter in any way or glorify IRC. It's pretty devoid of any kind of emotional investment. I'm not saying Twitter really owes anything to IRC, or that IRC is somehow a superior Twitter or even resembles it at all, nor do I think the grandparent did. I'm not saying that # denoting a topic is very profound. I'm not saying that existing open/distributed/standard services that exist are obviously superior to the closed/centralized/proprietary ones that exist (in most cases it's pretty obviously not true). Nor did I even espouse the opinion in this thread that given two theoretical services which are equal but that one is open/distributed/standardized and the other is closed/centralized/proprietary that the former is superior (that was the grandparent). That said, I do hold that opinion for reasons I feel are pretty self-evident. If we all communicate on fragmented channels that are owned by people with interests other than facilitating our communication, we aren't in very good hands, we miss out on lots of opportunities to communicate (there are friends I've fallen out of touch with because I've lost track of which instant messaging protocol they are most likely to respond on, I think most of us have some of these). Communication apps and protocols and services backed by commercial interests will of course have better invested in user experience. Admittedly, user experience is a higher priority of mine than openness, so I use Slack and Hangouts and Skype like anyone. I'm not going to judge anyone for their choices here. I'm just not going to ignore the fact that in making that choice, I'm giving up something.
- deckard1 11y ago
  Ad hominem with a smiley doesn't make you less of an asshole ;) > A hashtag is a way of grouping messages together Like IRC channels. > not a discrete conversational area with its own topic, access rules, and administrators. And? > Can I reply back to an RSS feed? No? Then I guess that's not identical either. I never made any such claim. > Can I access usenet without clunky, ancient software? Uh. Yes? That's the beauty of RSS, IRC, and Usenet. You get choice in the clients that you use. 140 character limits and SMS aren't clunky and ancient?? Really???? The article even mentions the torture of posting links. Such modern software, that crumbles under the mighty URL. > Is it mobile friendly at all? Of course Usenet is "mobile friendly". You fetch news when you have internet and can read it off-line at your leisure. If anything, it's the most "mobile friendly" protocol in existence.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    So where's the mobile friendly usenet clients that are accessed by appreciable numbers of users? Let me save you the time: They don't exist, and there's a reason for that. Stop being intentionally obtuse.
LukeB_UK 11y ago
> Why not forget bookmarks exist as well. Oh right. None of that can be monetized. Pinboard would disagree with you
tomjakubowski 11y ago
> Yeah, IRC channels never existed. I think I lost a few IQ points on this article. Huh? Hashtags are only superficially related to IRC channels. For one, you don't need to be "joined" to a hashtag to see messages on it.
- merlincorey 11y ago
  I always liken them to reverse IRC channels.
- dingaling 11y ago
  Plus IRC channels existed in a bounded scope which kept them relevant to the interests of their participants. Twitter hashtags are global in scope which makes many of them useless due to dilution. I encountered a particular Twitter hashtag the other day: #fog Imagine every global reference to fog being tagged thus. It's a mess.
hk__2 11y ago
> Yeah, IRC channels never existed. I think I lost a few IQ points on this article. The only common thing between IRC channels and hashtags is that they’re prefixed by a hash character. That’s all.

Karunamon 11y ago

<comment class="snarky;humorous"> Anyone who thinks that hashtags are equivalent in form or function to IRC channels is missing a few IQ points themselves. :) A hashtag is a way of grouping messages together, not a discrete conversational area with its own topic, access rules, and administrators. Can I reply back to an RSS feed? No? Then I guess that's not identical either. Can I access usenet without clunky, ancient software? Is it mobile friendly at all? No? Then I guess that's also not equivalent.

lotyrin 11y ago
They aren't identical, but the grandparent's argument wasn't dependent on the premise that they are. You simply can't argue there wasn't a solid history predating Twitter, across RFCs of using @name for users and #name for topics -- whether or not a topic (channel) in IRC resembles a hashtag. Also, the bit of the grandparent's rant about the decline of open channels and standards for communication (which definitely has happened) isn't diminished by adding on an explanation for why it occurred (there's no money in creating a sufficiently polished mobile UX for a decentralized service and protocol that nobody owns).
- Karunamon 11y ago
  I'm not sure there's another way to read "IRC channels never existed then" that isn't a comparison between IRC and hashtags... Sure, there's a superficial resemblance inasmuch as a channel and a hashtag are words prefixed by a #, but that is where the similarities end. The reason open standards for communication are in decline is because nobody uses them when technically better alternatives exist. Pretty much all of Hipchat/Slack's marketing copy is a laundry list of things that IRC simply cannot do without either hacky workarounds, or at all because the protocol doesn't support it. (rant mode) Remember that vaguely-disparaging comment here when Dropbox was announced, about how you could set up the same thing with some scripts and VCS repo? We're nerds, that's fine. We're perfectly okay with getting our hands dirty. Nobody else wants to do that when there's a much simpler alternative. Including nerds, because there's a lot better way to spend our time than reinventing, the hard way, something that someone else already did. There is a need, IMO, for a nonprofit foundation that makes things like Dropbox, Hipchat, etc. but more importantly, makes them with polish, and speaking as an engineer of sorts, that means that it can't be designed by engineers. It needs to be designed to solve problems that actual users have in the way that actual users work If you have to do things like edit .conf files, twiddle services, and so forth, you've already lost. That's plenty sysadmin friendly, but krptonite to users.
  - lotyrin 11y ago
    I think you might misunderstand my comments. I don't think you and I disagree much. You seem to be reading a lot into my comment and the grandparent's, I'm not sure what agenda you might suppose we have. I don't intend to point out the (sure, we can call it superficial) use of # to denote a topic to decry Twitter in any way or glorify IRC. It's pretty devoid of any kind of emotional investment. I'm not saying Twitter really owes anything to IRC, or that IRC is somehow a superior Twitter or even resembles it at all, nor do I think the grandparent did. I'm not saying that # denoting a topic is very profound. I'm not saying that existing open/distributed/standard services that exist are obviously superior to the closed/centralized/proprietary ones that exist (in most cases it's pretty obviously not true). Nor did I even espouse the opinion in this thread that given two theoretical services which are equal but that one is open/distributed/standardized and the other is closed/centralized/proprietary that the former is superior (that was the grandparent). That said, I do hold that opinion for reasons I feel are pretty self-evident. If we all communicate on fragmented channels that are owned by people with interests other than facilitating our communication, we aren't in very good hands, we miss out on lots of opportunities to communicate (there are friends I've fallen out of touch with because I've lost track of which instant messaging protocol they are most likely to respond on, I think most of us have some of these). Communication apps and protocols and services backed by commercial interests will of course have better invested in user experience. Admittedly, user experience is a higher priority of mine than openness, so I use Slack and Hangouts and Skype like anyone. I'm not going to judge anyone for their choices here. I'm just not going to ignore the fact that in making that choice, I'm giving up something.
deckard1 11y ago
Ad hominem with a smiley doesn't make you less of an asshole ;) > A hashtag is a way of grouping messages together Like IRC channels. > not a discrete conversational area with its own topic, access rules, and administrators. And? > Can I reply back to an RSS feed? No? Then I guess that's not identical either. I never made any such claim. > Can I access usenet without clunky, ancient software? Uh. Yes? That's the beauty of RSS, IRC, and Usenet. You get choice in the clients that you use. 140 character limits and SMS aren't clunky and ancient?? Really???? The article even mentions the torture of posting links. Such modern software, that crumbles under the mighty URL. > Is it mobile friendly at all? Of course Usenet is "mobile friendly". You fetch news when you have internet and can read it off-line at your leisure. If anything, it's the most "mobile friendly" protocol in existence.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  So where's the mobile friendly usenet clients that are accessed by appreciable numbers of users? Let me save you the time: They don't exist, and there's a reason for that. Stop being intentionally obtuse.

LukeB_UK 11y ago

> Why not forget bookmarks exist as well. Oh right. None of that can be monetized. Pinboard would disagree with you

tomjakubowski 11y ago

> Yeah, IRC channels never existed. I think I lost a few IQ points on this article. Huh? Hashtags are only superficially related to IRC channels. For one, you don't need to be "joined" to a hashtag to see messages on it.

merlincorey 11y ago
I always liken them to reverse IRC channels.
dingaling 11y ago
Plus IRC channels existed in a bounded scope which kept them relevant to the interests of their participants. Twitter hashtags are global in scope which makes many of them useless due to dilution. I encountered a particular Twitter hashtag the other day: #fog Imagine every global reference to fog being tagged thus. It's a mess.

hk__2 11y ago

> Yeah, IRC channels never existed. I think I lost a few IQ points on this article. The only common thing between IRC channels and hashtags is that they’re prefixed by a hash character. That’s all.