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

6 pointsby needlemealmost 11 years ago
Hello,<p>-- scenario --<p>I&#x27;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.<p>-- user case --<p>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:<p>&quot;hey @mrdobelina listen to Todd Terje - Ragysh in my collection, it&#x27;s #awesome!&quot;<p>boring. So I thought that would be cool to directly link the album with a symbol, example:<p>~ragysh<p>that would results in:<p>&quot;hey @mrdobelina listen to ~ragysh it&#x27;s #amazing!&quot;<p>the user can now click ~ragysh to be redirected to my post.<p>-- conclusion --<p>talking generally, now is:<p>@user is used to mention someone #tag is used to connect arguments<p>~object could be used to connect other users to a specific object<p>-- thoughts --<p>What you think? What symbol would you use instead of ~ ?<p>We&#x27;re going to add this feature in Needle soon.<p>-- not intended to be spammy self promotion --<p>Here&#x27;s the video teaser - http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bit.ly&#x2F;needle_teaser<p>you can download and try Needle at this link, it&#x27;s free and feedback is very appreciated. Soon we&#x27;ll officially launch<p>bit.ly&#x2F;needle_appstore<p>The @mention in comments works very bad, that&#x27;s why we restarted to work on them and the ~ idea came out.

8 comments

NaNaNalmost 11 years ago
Why should we create another complex markup language, instead of using hyper-links and images&#x2F;buttons that are already there? Too tired to type?
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Someone1234almost 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&#x2F;single first before using the ~format or is that automated somehow?
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oswalpalashalmost 11 years ago
Rather than ~, you should use some other symbol which is more common on social networking platforms like ^. Just a suggestion though :)
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brokenstapleralmost 11 years ago
I don&#x27;t understand what problem this would solve. Couldn&#x27;t they just click #ragysh to be directed to your post?
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hammockalmost 11 years ago
Why couldn&#x27;t you just use @ in this case. The app could parse it later into whatever symbol you wanted
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chtonalmost 11 years ago
wouldn&#x27;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.
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dogemalmost 11 years ago
Maybe try + Like: hey, listen to +ragysh
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RogerLalmost 11 years ago
&amp; looks like a G clef, sort of.
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