self serve support, what I learned about using numbers in facebook’s hashtags

I support Open Library. We don’t offer a lot of support but we do offer some. If you don’t understand a thing, a person will help you with it.

Nowadays most “free” products only offer self-serve help pages or forums if you have a question. I had one today. I made a post on Instagram. Instagram posts automagically to Facebook. I used two hashtags #meta and #1977. The first one auto-linked on fb and the second one did not. I checked the help files and it seems to say that you can use numbers in hashtags. So what was going on? My hypothesis was that numbers were somehow reserved in the internal mechanisms of the thing. So I did a few experiments.

1. Does it even work? The #meta hashtag (which fb auto-linked) generated this URL: https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/meta. You can link it and go read some stuff. If you make a new URL with 1977 you get a decently ugly error page.

something went wrong facebook errorигры винкс

2. You can search for either of these tags in the search box and find posts using the string of characters #meta or #1977. Huh.

3. Maybe dates are a special sort of number that’s eliminated? I tried a few more hashtag options: love1 and 1love work. OneEightSeven works but 187 does not. In fact, I could find no combination of only numbers that wouldn’t produce that ugly error message. And, though it took me a while to find a combination of letters that resulted in no hits, I did still get a response when I did that, not a failure.

we found no results

Conclusion: facebook’s help files are missing the useful piece of information that you actually can’t have a hashtag that is all numbers. This is part 47 of why we will still need librarians or their equivalent in the age of Google. I hope this is helpful for someone. The end.

noted without comment: VPL sponsorship guidelines during the Olympics

Do not have Pepsi or Dairy Queen sponsor your event,” read guidelines sent to [Vancouver Public Library] branch heads and supervisory staff last fall. “Coke and McDonald’s are the Olympic sponsors. If you are planning a kids’ event and approaching sponsors, approach McDonald’s and not another well-known fast-food outlet.” [juice]

what’s going on with koha and liblime

“Meanwhile, if there is high ground to be had, I doubt it is currently occupied by LibLime.”

Roy Tennant explains what’s been going on at LibLime and links to a longer post at Library Matters. LibLime’s version of this announcement, on their news feed, is not very encouraging. As someone working with a tiny library and a free version of Koha, I’m particularly disappointed in the libraries that are helping bankroll this and are not pushing for more openness in terms of release dates for code and better communication all around. Meanwhile Nicole Engard whose work I respect a lot has taken a job at Bywater Solutions. They are lucky to have her.

dear Elsevier, stop digging, you are embarassing us

“Elsevier officials said Monday that it was a mistake for the publishing giant’s marketing division to offer $25 Amazon gift cards to anyone who would give a new textbook five stars in a review posted on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. While those popular Web sites’ customer reviews have long been known to be something less than scientific, and prone to manipulation if an author has friends write on behalf of a new work, the idea that a major academic publisher would attempt to pay for good reviews angered some professors who received the e-mail pitch.”

Ugh. [shelf]

Igeek open standards

From LISNews: “Geek the Library is a community-based public awareness campaign designed to highlight the vital role of public libraries for individuals and communities, and raise awareness about the critical funding issues they (we) face.” What do you think about it?

my librarian friend : i’m waiting for you to weigh in on the new OCLC thing that looks pretty but i don’t get.
me : which? OCLC is so barely relevant to me
my librarian friend : ha! http://geekthelibrary.org/
me : did you know that George from Flickr [who was doing the commons stuff] is now running Open Library?
my librarian friend : i did not know that
me : if OCLC has so much money why aren’t they giving grants or donations to smaller libraries so they can truly be a union catalog?
me : that’s how I’d like them to show their support for the library community
my librarian friend : yeah but then they couldn’t sell things to those libraries in the future, silly.
me : “Igeekopen standards”
me : wow, I did not know about this though
my librarian friend : make a badge for your site.
me : is the Igeek thing supposed to be evocative of like iPod?
me : do they know they’re doin it wrong?
my librarian friend : dunno why they decidedtoerasespaces
me : man this is annoying. Slick site, very functional and still this is where BMGF decides to put their cash?
my librarian friend : yeah, i want to like it just because a library “org” actually put out a nice site, but…
my librarian friend : plus? lou reed
me : and geek isn’t a verb, I mean I know that’s pedantic but this is totally advocacy from the outside
my librarian friend : is lou reed the only famous face?
my librarian friend : if so, odd.
me : I assume he’s someone’s friend
me : and where are, you know the ACTUAL LIBRARIES on that site
me : srsly
me : it’s all about bypassing the institutions to get at the readers/users, sort of? awareness capaign of the future libraries while ignoring the current ones?
me : I mean it’s easy to poke fun at
my librarian friend : what i don’t understand is how people declaring their interests on this site will lead to support for libraries.
me : there’s a page that tells you to call your mayor
my librarian friend : yeah
me : I see some more famous people
me : and a survery which is more data for them
my librarian friend : for the next report!
me : yep
me : it’s really graphically appealing