Google Kills!

... some of its own products anyhow.

Through the history of this creative company lots and lots of ideas have seen the light of day, but almost just as many has also been buried in the dark again. I recently came across this funny info graphic of different Google ideas that have been cancelled. These applications have been retired, either because of integration with other Google products, or through lack of support. Among the discontinued products we find a few noteworthy entries:

• Google Buzz – social networking service integrated with Gmail service allowing users to share updates, photos, videos, and more at once. It let users make conversations about things they found interesting. It was released on February 9, 2010. Discontinued by end of 2011
• Google Wave – Online communication and Collaborative real-time editor tool using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. Development ceased on August 4, 2010. This product support is no longer available (turned off completely on April 30, 2012 by Google).
• Shared Stuff – web page sharing system, incorporating a share bookmarklet to share pages, and a page to view the most popular shared items. Pages could also be shared through third party applications, such as Delicious or Facebook. Discontinued on March 30, 2009.

Question now is naturally: why does Google+ still exist? And when is the Google Car going to be available for the open market? Find the full graph below:

How not to #irritate #followers

It’s difficult to express how annoying the misuse of hashtags on Twitter, and now also Facebook, is. While there are definitely some upsides to using the popular conversation-tracking feature, there are many of us who either simply don’t understand how to use them appropriately, or think it’s funny to overuse them. Lets break that myth - it is not funny. Never was, never will be.

Don't get me wrong - hastags are important. Conversations collect around hashtags. Posting with the right hashtag is a great way to send your message not just to your followers, but to everyone who is tuned into that conversation.

Here are some common mistakes often made by hashtaggers:

1. Breaking Hashtags with Punctuation

Always remember that punctuation breaks hashtags. It is a common misconception that any characters following the pound sign that are not separated by a space will be clickable. This is not true. Here’s an example of a broken hashtag:

#blogging-for-profit

There is one exception; the underscore, can be used in hashtags. As a possible solution to our broken hashtag above, we could replace the hyphens with underscores:

#blogging_for_profit

Just because something is permissible, does not make it beneficial, hashtags with underscores are not best practice. Avoid using underscores in hashtags whenever possible. They are hard to remember, hard to type (especially on a phone) and therefore hard for other people to adopt.

2. Using Too Many Hashtags

Hashtags are most powerful when you use them judiciously. Including more than two in a post is probably overkill, and you only need to tag the most important word that represents the theme of your post. Example:

i just ate a grape
#food #grape #grapes #white grapes #wine #fruits #vintage #fashion #gifs #text #trendy #lol #random #90s #90s kids #hipster #hipster edit #tv #t #v #coffee #starbucks #art #artists #drawings #paint

This is spam. Stick with no more than two or three hashtags. Period.

3. Using Hashtags That Are Too Long
Reading long hashtags is like reading a run-on sentence. They’re hard to read, and there is only a small chance that others users will care to use them. Keep your hashtags as short as possible, this will also make it easier for followers to reuse them, and your community to get started. 

4. Being Redundant
Another common mistake is posting including a hashtag of a word mentioned earlier in the post. Here’s an example:

I really enjoy blogging about social media. #blogging

To save characters and avoid being redundant, this should be rewritten as:

I really enjoy #blogging about social media.

5. Not Using PascalCase
PascalCase is a term most often used in web development to describe how phrases with multiple words but no spaces are joined with capital letters. It is just as applicable to hashtags.

#thishashtagdoesnotusepascalcase
This hashtag is extremely hard to read, so lets make it easier.

#ThisHashtagDoesUsePascalCase
Aside from the fact that this hashtag is too long, it is much easier to read than the previous example. If you ever use more than one word in a hashtag, do everyone a favor and use PascalCase.

You now know how to use hashtags without making most common mistakes. Now go out and hashtag, but please remember not to annoy or spam anyone while doing it - that will only hurt yourself in the long run!