Ask HN: After "@" and "#" it's time to add a new symbol?

6 points by needleme 11 years ago | 19 comments

Hello,

-- scenario --

I'm the founder of Needle, a social network for vinyl records lovers. In Needle users post their vinyl records and other users can Like and Comment (with @user and #tag) our vinyl records. In our case they can also listen the preview of the song in the vinyl record.

-- user case --

Today happened that a guy posted a record similar to one in my collection so I thought I wanted to tell him to listen to my record, but I had to say something like:

"hey @mrdobelina listen to Todd Terje - Ragysh in my collection, it's #awesome!"

boring. So I thought that would be cool to directly link the album with a symbol, example:

~ragysh

that would results in:

"hey @mrdobelina listen to ~ragysh it's #amazing!"

the user can now click ~ragysh to be redirected to my post.

-- conclusion --

talking generally, now is:

@user is used to mention someone #tag is used to connect arguments

~object could be used to connect other users to a specific object

-- thoughts --

What you think? What symbol would you use instead of ~ ?

We're going to add this feature in Needle soon.

-- not intended to be spammy self promotion --

Here's the video teaser - http://bit.ly/needle_teaser

you can download and try Needle at this link, it's free and feedback is very appreciated. Soon we'll officially launch

bit.ly/needle_appstore

The @mention in comments works very bad, that's why we restarted to work on them and the ~ idea came out.

NaNaN 11 years ago |

Why should we create another complex markup language, instead of using hyper-links and images/buttons that are already there? Too tired to type?

needleme 11 years ago | |

I forgot to say that Needle it's a mobile app, so it's complicated to use hyperlinks and other things.

I don't think is complex, I think is very usefull. A trigger to an object I want to share.

Think of Instagram, in a comment of an another user you want to show a pic you made of the same subject: Hey @user check my ~objectID looks similar

When the user start ~ Instagram will return the thumbnail of my pics, I can choose the one I want and bam I've created a direct link to one of my pics. Same goes for Twitter and other apps.

Sure there's other things to think about how it could work in Instagram but it could be an idea.

Someone1234 11 years ago |

It seems like a good idea, but what happens for example of two albums (or singles) have the same exact title? Also do users have to add the album/single first before using the ~format or is that automated somehow?

needleme 11 years ago | |

Ideally I was thinking to let user filter only through the album they have uploaded. This to avoid to filter thousands of vinyl records in our database.

About the same title I guess that a solution might be the one I've written to chton down here

oswalpalash 11 years ago |

Rather than ~, you should use some other symbol which is more common on social networking platforms like ^. Just a suggestion though :)

needleme 11 years ago | |

thanks for the suggestion! =)

brokenstapler 11 years ago |

I don't understand what problem this would solve. Couldn't they just click #ragysh to be directed to your post?

needleme 11 years ago | |

It actually create a link to a specific object, using #ragysh would show all the release that have this tag, not the specific one I want to show.

brokenstapler 11 years ago | | |

Ok, but how is that different than a link? Are you saying that inserting a tilda will tell the mobile app to link to something? Sorry, I don't see this solving any problem. I see it just adding another layer of complication to a system.

hammock 11 years ago |

Why couldn't you just use @ in this case. The app could parse it later into whatever symbol you wanted

needleme 11 years ago | |

@ is used to mention users, so if we start typing @ it would return the users list and also the vinyl records list, too much data to filter

chton 11 years ago |

wouldn't it be more interesting if you enabled the linking ability on any text? If I use the ~ syntax, I lose the actual name of the record. If it was possible to just link any text to your posts, it would be a lot clearer.

needleme 11 years ago | |

yea it's tru that you actually lose the actual name, however when the user click it will see the real title. Let's say that it could be a shortcut.

A good "workaround" might be that the ~ trigger the list of album in my collection (for example ~r filter the album title that start with r) once I click the album I want in the comment will appear the full clickable title so: Todd Terje - Ragysh

chton 11 years ago | | |

that would be an excellent solution. Makes it easy to use and very clear to both the sender and the receiver.

dogem 11 years ago |

Maybe try + Like: hey, listen to +ragysh

needleme 11 years ago | |

Yes that would be nice, but I was thinking of a character that is not "commonly" used while chatting, to avoid boring pop up while writing normal things

RogerL 11 years ago |

& looks like a G clef, sort of.

needleme 11 years ago | |

yea, true!