Why I Don't Use Hashtags

I've never really been clear on why I'm supposed to use hashtags on Twitter. Apparently, they're supposed to help other people find my tweet using the search function or "trending topics." But, as this great article from the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard points out, the volume of tweets is still too high for hashtags to matter. Daniel Victor:

According to Twitter, #SuperBowl was used 3 million times over about five hours on Super Bowl Sunday this year. Look at all those people who might be interested in our jokes about Beyonce! And yet getting any single person’s attention is just short of impossible, like a single Niagara droplet screaming for notice as it shoots down the falls.

Though there were peaks and valleys, 3 million tweets over five hours comes out to an average of 167 tweets per second. To say that someone would have to search for “#SuperBowl” in the split-second you sent it would actually be a little generous; assuming they’ll notice your tweet if it’s in the most recent 10 tweets, users would have a window of 1/17 of a second to find you.

Basically, you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. Use a hashtag that's too common and your tweet will be lost amidst the thousands or millions of others using the same one. A hashtag that's too specific won't be noticed or searched for. A hashtag that's "trending" hides individual tweets almost by definition, since it means there are many people using the same tag.

I also have trouble believing that people do very much searching on Twitter. Anecdotally, I don't see or hear about friends using Twitter's search function often at all. Victor points out that hashtags are occasionally useful at conferences or among other small groups. I agree, to a point. If the conference is too large or high-profile (take South by Southwest for example), filtering by hashtag is still an exercise in reading a lot of junk tweets. Again, it's only useful if you can thread a pretty small needle between too not enough posts and too many.

The problem is compounded by the fact that hashtags feel like marketing. It's as if companies convinced us to append the little trademark (™) symbol every time we write the name of a product. Maybe I'll start posting about Coke™ on Twitter™ while using my Mac™. #Winning! Doing so doesn't add any information to the message. In fact, hashtags detract from it – clogging up my post with what is, essentially, advertising. (Look no further than TV commercials, which now often contain a "suggested" hashtag.) Plus, as Victor points out, they're ugly.

So, to sum up. Hashtags aren't likely to get a tweet more exposure, they don't add any information, and they look bad. Why are people using them, again?

Why Developers Shouldn’t Use iCloud Syncing, Even If It Worked →

Brent Simmons has a number of reasons not to use iCloud, including one that lines up with my recent post on the topic:

We’ve been living in a social world for years. But iCloud syncing is not social: it’s per-user syncing.

If you write your own server, you can write the social bits, so your users can share recipes, weather forecasts (look, Mom, it’s going to be sunny on Thursday!), favorite articles, or whatever-it-is your app does.

He offers another great reason, which is iCloud's inability to interact with server-side services:

iCloud can’t poll Twitter to see if your follower count has gone up or down. iCloud can’t generate weather forecasts. iCloud can’t track ships.

There are all kinds of services that make sense on the server side. You could do some of them on a client, but at the expense of timeliness and battery life. If it’s a good idea, and you don’t do it on a server, your competition just has to write a server that does it, and your app is finished.

Even if you wanted to write your own server and then integrate with iCloud for syncing, it's impossible. There's no API that would allow a server to connect to iCloud.

At this point, implementation problems are by far the biggest obstacle to iCloud adoption. But once those are solved, the limitations designed into the platform will still be a big barrier.

Flying iPads

The New York Times reported yesterday that the FAA is getting closer to allowing people to use electronic devices on planes during takeoff and landing. From the Bits blog:

According to people who work with an industry working group that the Federal Aviation Administration set up last year to study the use of portable electronics on planes, the agency hopes to announce by the end of this year that it will relax the rules for reading devices during takeoff and landing. The change would not include cellphones.

Marco Arment is concerned about the term "reading devices."

Is the Kindle Fire a reading device since it’s named “Kindle”, even though it can do a lot more? Are iPads reading devices? How about an iPad Mini with an LTE radio? I assume iPhones would be prohibited as “cellphones”, but what about iPod Touches?

I agree that "reading devices" is a silly and probably self-defeating standard to use, but I think Marco may be taking the Times article a little too literally. I doubt that the FAA would use the term "reading devices" in an actual regulation, because they'd have to device on a definition for a reading device. As Marco points out, that's a tall order. If the FAA released a statement talking about reading devices, I'd be very worried. But in this case, I think we're looking at a case of a reporter being a little loose with his words.

The most likely scenario is that the FAA will use similar rules during takeoff and landing as it does during the cruise section of the flight. That is, radios that send and receive signals must be turned off. During flight, WiFi is OK; during takeoff and landing, it's not. I imagine the rules will look something like this:

• All electronic devices must be set so they do not send or receive a signal.
• After takeoff and before landing, you may use WiFi but not cellular communications.

The second rule is basically the status quo. The updated version simply replaces "please turn off all electronic devices" with "please set all electronic devices so that they do not send or receive a signal." (I wouldn't be surprised to see an additional rule banning headphone use during takeoff and landing, so that you can hear crew announcements. Right now you can use headphones for TV on airlines like JetBlue, but crew announcements preempt the TV audio.)

Will some people get it wrong and leave radios enabled on their phones? Sure, but some people forget (or "forget") to turn off electronics now, and it doesn't seem to be a problem. Will flight crews have trouble determining whether people are really complying with the rules? Yes, but again, that's pretty much the status quo. Will different devices do different things in "airplane mode," leading to inadvertent violations of the rules? Probably, but having a standard set of rules about use of electronics use during flight will gradually help standardize airplane modes.

The Price of Free →

Michael Jurewitz, a.k.a. Jury:

There is no doubt that free can lead to huge user bases and massive adoption. In the face of venture capital or existing cash stores, the siren call of free often sounds like a low-risk bet on future profits. In practice, free is a costly mistake that businesses and small developers should avoid, and users should run away from like the plague.

I'm going to assume for a moment that if you are reading this blog you care about making great product. Selling to lots of users is at least as important to you as being proud of what you build. Most folks in this camp aren't looking for a quick sale or to flip their business to a big buyer. If you care about the long term success of your business, you want users handing you money for what you build. You want the acquisition of money closely aligned with what makes your users happy.

This is a big part of why I've never made my iOS apps free, even when sales have been relatively slow.

The Sunday-Only Newspaper Problem

A strange pricing trend has emerged as a number of high-profile newspapers have started charging for access to their web sites. Specifically, newspapers are charging less for Sunday paper delivery and unlimited web access than they charge for web access on its own. For example, the Boston Globe charges $3.50/week for Sunday-only delivery and web access, but $3.98/week for web access alone. The New York Times has a similar model, and the Washington Post is apparently considering it as well. This pricing is the opposite of what you'd normally expect: you pay more to get more. Why are newspapers essentially paying people to take their Sunday editions?

The bread and butter of a newspaper is print advertising. A Pew Research Center report on the state of the news media calculated that newspapers brought in $19.1 billion in print advertising revenue, and only $3.3 billion in online ad revenue. Moreover, online ad sales aren't growing fast enough to offset the loss in print ads:

Print advertising losses continue to far exceed digital ad gains. For 2012, the ratio was about 16 print dollars lost for every digital dollar gained—even worse than the 10 to 1 ratio in 2011.

Notably, the Pew report also documents an increase in Sunday, subcriptions:

Sunday circulation has risen thanks to more new rules for counting audience that includes more digital products and the industry’s emphasis on growing sales of Sunday issues, which are the best-read and most profitable papers of the week.

It seems that efforts by newspapers to increase their Sunday paper circulation are succeeding. In order to prop up print circulation numbers, newspapers are subsidizing Sunday-only subscriptions. By including web access with a Sunday-only delivery, papers can encourage people to buy a print subscription, even if all they really want to do is read online.

What should we think of all this? Well, firstly, that newspapers are going to have to deal with the death of their print editions sooner or later. These subsidies will last a while, but it's pretty easy to see the writing on the wall.

As a consumer, I have just one request: Don't make me pay more to avoid getting something I don't want. I don't want a print edition of the Sunday paper. Honestly, I'll never look at it. The best-case scenario would be to charge less for web-only access than for a Sunday edition, but based on the data I'm pretty sure that's not in the cards. But there's another option that should help everyone out: Give readers the option to buy that Sunday-only subscription, use the online access, and donate the actual printed Sunday paper to a school, library, or charity. People like me wouldn't have their houses cluttered by unwanted paper, needy people get access to quality news coverage, and the newsapaper gets to keep its print subscriptions up. Newspapers, make it happen and I'll gladly subscribe!