Tuesday, April 07, 2009
the cool kids are using asterisks

Henning von Vogelsang has what sounds like a cool idea. Let's use the asterisk symbol to denote a source, when we're referencing an idea, link or concept that someone else gave us.

Henning's post actually points out an interesting detail about what Twitter has done to online pop culture. People now use the @ symbol to refer to people, and hashtags to refer to topics - even outside of the twittersphere. So why not add the asterisk?

*Henning von Vogelsang

Labels: pop culture, social media, twitter

posted by darryl ohrt @ 7:28 AM   2 comments

2 Comments:

At 12:55 PM,  James Britt said...

The use of the @ prefix outside of Twitter is goofy, unless the intent is to specify a Twitter ID.

I've seen newsgroup posts that referred to @james, intending to reference me; that's not my Twitter ID, and just using my, you know, *name*, would be more informative to the reader.

This spreading usage seems driven more by digerati hipsterism that any real need or desire to convey information.

Using the * in tweets may be handy, but if it gains steam I expect to see it outside of twitter, even though there exists better, established ways to indicate sources.

The illitertwit masses.  

At 12:36 AM,  Anonymous said...

I disagree...it's no different than using "re: [subject]" in a response, and I think it's equally as direct as an asterisk. You've over thought this one in my opinion.  

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