Chris Messina on Twitter Tags

Chris Messina suggests the use of the hash character ("#") to precede Twitter tags... which are not supported by any tools yet:

[from yeah, I'm proposing that we use the hash (#) for tagging or grouping...

He then goes on, in his next tweet, to use the hash, making a startling(?) announcement:

Ok, leaving Citizen Space. Relocating probably to work more. #citizenspace

But I bet he doesn't mean permanently moving out of his Citizen Agency office because he needs to accomplish more work: I bet he's just leaving for the evening.

Anyway... I support the #tag convention.

Comments

[Conor O'Neill]

Just sent ya tweets on this but you may not see them. Gist was:

Jaiku already uses # for channels. It would be nice to have consistency in microblogs. I suggested [tag1] [tag2] recently. It's an extra char I know but there is a precedent with simpletags plugin for Wordpress.

I'm surprised FactoryJoe suggested # since he is on Jaiku too and # has exisiting usage for channels on IRC.

Of course if "tagging" is shorthand for Twitter pseudo-channels then I guess it makes sense (rather than being shorthand for rel-tag).

[Chris Messina]

Hey Stowe -- saw your tweet in reply... I was only leaving the space for the evening, not permanently... ;)

And as for the # convention... not only am I citing you as part of the influence, but I'm working on blogging an entire feature spec tonight for "Tag Channels"!