Twitter Litter
July 5th, 2008
I’ve noticed an increase in the use of folks adding a leading ’@’ character to user names (and even real names) in threaded discussion boards, mailing lists, and E-mail.
I don’t think any of the uses I’ve seen were meant to aid any sort of automated text processing; it appears to be a bad habit that perhaps makes sense on Twitter, but is merely line noise elsewhere.
Please consider: No Twitter Litter.
3 Responses to “Twitter Litter”
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July 5th, 2008 at 06:45 PM
The trend may have picked up since the advent of Twitter, but I’ve seen this pre-Twitter as a way for folks who leave comments on blogs to reply to earlier commenters.
July 5th, 2008 at 08:00 PM
“The trend may have picked up since the advent of Twitter, but I’ve seen this pre-Twitter as a way for folks who leave comments on blogs to reply to earlier commenters.”
Interesting. I’ve never seen before about 2 months ago.
And I still don’t see what it adds; it’s like some geek fetish for needless sigils.
July 9th, 2008 at 04:52 AM
People have been using it for years in forums and on blogs.