Hashtags in email subject headers

internet applications — Leon Jacobs @ 8:50 am

Hashtags have proven to be extremely useful in twitter. It has the ability to convert noise to signal in the cacophony of the millions of 140 character packets that fly around the planet everyday.

What if we can spread the same meme and apply hashtags to that other noisy medium: email. If we were disciplined to add hashtags to subject headers, we could make it very easy for recipients to organise and respond to our missives. Perhaps email clients of the future could have built-in capabilities for dealing with hashtags?

Emails with subject headers like “re: hi” are terribly obtuse and confusing. Imagine a world in which your inbox consists of the likes of:

  • #approve #project_x #budget
  • #party #alex – you are invited
  • #fyi #design

etc.

2 Comments »

  1. So what you are really saying is you wish people would use more precise and informative subject lines (I agree completely). The hashtag bit seems a distraction, a piece of techno-fluff?

    Comment by András — July 22, 2009 @ 3:34 pm

  2. One man’s fluff is another man’s vonk!, András!

    Comment by Leon Jacobs — July 29, 2009 @ 12:01 pm

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