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.
That's pretty interesting. I wonder how smileys fit into our grammar.
I often wonder what our typical grammar will look like in 50-100 years or more. I'm sure something will survive.
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.
Latin had a vocative case which was formed by changing the ending. "Et tu, Brute?" could be translated into "And you, @Brutus?", not the usage of "?", "," and "@" as grammatical markers.
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 reasons, public posts and comments are preferable for advertising purposes, so Facebook is also trying to eat Twitter's pie.
Problem is, can you be both the place where people connect with their closest connections, and where public discourse goes on? My guess is that you can't, and if this move really succeeds - which is entirely possible - this could be the start of the end of FB's domination of the "privately sharing" space - which is less easily monetized, but much more compelling than the "publicly sharing" one.
> 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, this is my assumption) and now redirects to his personal page (www.facebook.com/markzuckerberg -> www.facebook.com/zuck). The second attempt, well, as you can see from his profile, it is pretty much closed up now.
Private sharing, as least from the friends I have, has been going on pretty frequently, just not on the timeline
* private groups
* group messages
With messages, it seems Facebook is testing inline message (1) along the status composer (on the homepage) which aligns with the thinking that they are making private sharing less restrictive to action on while maintaining "privacy" (in quotes, as some may not agree to the level of privacy offered)
I have no data to back up how effective private sharing is though.
Why would you guess that you can't be that place? Personally, it would make much more sense to have a place where I share all my stories and then choose whether it should be for the public or just personal (like how it's currently done with Facebook). That makes more sense to me than having two separate sites to share public vs personal, as long as there is still the aspect that personal DOES, indeed, stay personal.
[+] [-] rmc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] russellsprouts|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zemo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] weinzierl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ypcx|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sneak|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danmaz74|12 years ago|reply
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 reasons, public posts and comments are preferable for advertising purposes, so Facebook is also trying to eat Twitter's pie.
Problem is, can you be both the place where people connect with their closest connections, and where public discourse goes on? My guess is that you can't, and if this move really succeeds - which is entirely possible - this could be the start of the end of FB's domination of the "privately sharing" space - which is less easily monetized, but much more compelling than the "publicly sharing" one.
(1) http://hashtagify.me
(2) http://danmaz74.me/2013/05/16/facebook-hashtags-when-monetiz...
EDIT: some corrections
[+] [-] phwd|12 years ago|reply
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, this is my assumption) and now redirects to his personal page (www.facebook.com/markzuckerberg -> www.facebook.com/zuck). The second attempt, well, as you can see from his profile, it is pretty much closed up now.
Private sharing, as least from the friends I have, has been going on pretty frequently, just not on the timeline
* private groups
* group messages
With messages, it seems Facebook is testing inline message (1) along the status composer (on the homepage) which aligns with the thinking that they are making private sharing less restrictive to action on while maintaining "privacy" (in quotes, as some may not agree to the level of privacy offered)
I have no data to back up how effective private sharing is though.
(1) http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/02/facebook-status-composer-me...
[+] [-] bluetidepro|12 years ago|reply
Why would you guess that you can't be that place? Personally, it would make much more sense to have a place where I share all my stories and then choose whether it should be for the public or just personal (like how it's currently done with Facebook). That makes more sense to me than having two separate sites to share public vs personal, as long as there is still the aspect that personal DOES, indeed, stay personal.
[+] [-] kriro|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vfl0|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedanbik|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kriro|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] medell|12 years ago|reply
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/01/30/france-bids-adieu-to-the...
[+] [-] 6chars|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicwolff|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krapp|12 years ago|reply
#hashtagallthethings #earlyadopter
[+] [-] allanberger|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Yhippa|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geehsien|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghrev|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jgross206|12 years ago|reply