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

by needleme on 7/10/14, 1:34 PM with 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.

  • by NaNaN on 7/10/14, 2:49 PM

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

  • by Someone1234 on 7/10/14, 2:08 PM

    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?

  • by oswalpalash on 7/10/14, 3:04 PM

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

  • by brokenstapler on 7/10/14, 2:28 PM

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

  • by hammock on 7/12/14, 2:08 AM

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

  • by chton on 7/10/14, 2:27 PM

    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.

  • by dogem on 7/11/14, 8:30 AM

    Maybe try + Like: hey, listen to +ragysh

  • by RogerL on 7/10/14, 7:18 PM

    & looks like a G clef, sort of.