

Maximize your tweet's chance of discovery via hashtags - maintopbiz
http://ritetag.com/

======
oskarth
This is a cool idea, but can someone explain why this requires the following
Twitter permissions?

\- Update your profile.

\- Post Tweets for you.

\- Access your direct messages.

In general I'm at loss why so many apps require so many permissions. They must
lose a ton of customers from this. Anyone care to explain? Is it just a spam
app meant to create a botnet or what?

~~~
maintopbiz
Hi, I am a co-founder of RiteTag. Don't worry we are not any spam bot. But
unfurtunately, Twitter has only 3 types of permissions:

1) Read 2) Write 3) Direct messages

We cannot go only for Read because we need to allow users to sent and schedule
tweets via RiteTag. But we do not send anything that user hasn't manually
approved.

Write permission goes automatically with Update your profile even though we
don't use it at all. As developers, we cannot select only Posting tweets.
That's Twitter's policy. It doesn't make sense for us either.

Lastly, we were playing with direct messages a year ago. We don't need them
now and we could turn them off. But in the meantime we got more than 7000
users and if we change the permissions RiteTag would stop working for them
until they re-authorize it. This means all the tweets they have scheduled
would not be sent.

Here is more info from Twitter, if you are interested:
[https://dev.twitter.com/docs/application-permission-
model](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/application-permission-model)

~~~
d0ugie
Regarding not wanting to turn off the DM permission in order to avoid a
disruption to 7000 users, as the DM permission is a disquieting thing that
will prompt complaints as this gains popularity and 7000 isn't that high a
number, you might want to just rip the band aid off and get it over with now..

~~~
ritetag
Founder of RiteTag here, and always available @osakasaul in Twitter (Saul
Fleischman). FWIW, in regards to 7K users not being a high number, it took us
25 months to get to 7K users. Many signed up well over a year ago. Asking them
all to remove permission in Twitter settings and then auth in again, we'd lose
so many people who are not used to going into Twitter settings, and would
simply go away. But thank you very much for the feedback - and also, a
worthwhile opinion on the problem with Twitter permissions.

------
level09
I played with twitter bots before, and I tried different ways to maximize the
exposure of my "automated" tweets, sometimes by parsing dictionary words,
other times by targeting trending hashtags, but that didn't seem to generate
much traffic.

I would be really interested in any statistics regarding the effect of
hashtags, or statistics about users who actually browse/search through
hashtags.

~~~
minimaxir
I submitted a post yesterday I wrote about using statistical analysis on
Instagram hashtags:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7458540](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7458540)

The key takeaway is that there's a lot of variance in the amount of engagement
even after optimizing your hashtags. Twitter would be _worse_ since there's an
implicit hashtag cap.

------
binxbolling
Can I give you some unsolicited feedback?

\- On Firefox 27x the "Most Popular" note is overlapped on top of the pricing,
making both hard to read

\- the jump from free to lite seems a little large... is there no room for,
say, a $5/mo plan?

\- after authorizing Twitter in order to sign up, the site blanked out and I
had to go back to ritetag.com manually, after which I was logged in

\- I can't tell a difference between the colors for "tweets with low chance"
and "tweets with high chance". I'm assuming one is orange and one is green,
but like a sizable minority of your users, I'm essentially unable to
distinguish between the two effectively given the shades you've chosen.

\- Related, "tweets with a high chance of being discovered" wraps to the far
left, instead of just below (so it looks like on the other side we have
"tweets with no chance of being discovered discovered"

Otherwise, I'm looking forward to exploring more -- interesting concept, and I
personally haven't seen this done before.

~~~
maintopbiz
Thanks a lot! We will check the Firefox issues and learn more about color-
blindness to make RiteTag more accessible.

Regarding the cheaper plan, we'll need to think it through as small amounts
are not profitable due fixed costs per transaction.

~~~
solomania9
Obligatory Bitcoin reference... Check out integrating with Coinbase?

~~~
ritetag
Founder, here. Few ask for bitcoin for payment, but the bigger truth is that
when we need to show investors that people see value, we actually can't risk
being told "right. people paid you with something that cost them nada to
acquire." This is not my stance on bitcoin, but we do need to respect the big
wigs' decision-leading standpoints.

------
onion2k
Do people actually watch hashtags that aren't event specific?

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
My thoughts exactly. They always look a bit #desperate #tryingtoohard
#inauthentic PLEASE RT!!!

~~~
ballard
That would be a funny contest: most desperate tweet.

------
torrent-of-ions
I thought this was a joke then I came to the comments and everyone is being
serious. I guess they've changed what "it" is.

------
donmb
You can also look up the hashtag and check traffic there. If there is a tweet
every 2s => too much traffic to get discovered. If there is a tweet only every
30min => chance high. Don't get why I would pay $15+ for such a service.

~~~
theriteflora
One of our goals is to make it easy for our users. It will reduce the amount
of time spent on evaluating hashtags and guesswork. We are also integrated in
places other than Twitter, such as Hootsuite, SocialOomph and Buffer. We have
functions other than checking hashtag traffic where we allow you to schedule
tweets, check for associated hashtags, and many more.

You can try out our service for free first to further evaluate the value of
RiteTag. I hope you will reconsider!

------
TenDnal
I've tried to download the browser extension and got 404 error, tried to find
the app in google store and no luck. Is it geographically limited? What can be
the reason? Thanks.

~~~
maintopbiz
Hi. Here is the link:[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ritetag-find-
the-b...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ritetag-find-the-best-
has/flookmlccbimcdpnbblpdjhpmjlblfgg)

We'll check the links.

------
atomicfiredoll
This sounded really helpful, then I tried to use it and ended up with this:
[http://i.imgur.com/LsPHVd6.png](http://i.imgur.com/LsPHVd6.png)

Derp.

~~~
maintopbiz
RiteTag shows associated hashtags that are often used with your query. We
didn't make that up. That's what people really use.

------
paulgb
Does this account how often people search for each hashtag? Do people really
discover tweets with generic hashtags like #Guide?

~~~
osakasaul
There is personal experience - from our people and the many that talk about
hashtag successes. As examples, "operation wallstreet" rallied tremendous
community support with #ows and then related hashtags like #owsboston etc.
When there was media blackout about a rigged election in Iran and phonelines
were even blocked, a hashtag spread the truth. What's more, it was my personal
experience, during the big earthquake and tsunami (tidal wave) in Japan, and
seeing how I could find very relevant tweets from hashtag streams rather than
the cover-up on Fukushima on TV that led me to understand that hashtags have
power - but that no one knew which was any better than another.

------
adam-_-
I clicked around a few pages and couldn't see anywhere which explained what
the different colours mean.

~~~
theriteflora
I apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for the feedback. I'll link
you to two of our blogposts that explain a lot of the RiteTag functions.

Pink is "overused", Blue is "good" and Green is "Great". The blogposts will
explain more of our functionality!

[http://ritetag.com/hashtag-academy/workshop-2](http://ritetag.com/hashtag-
academy/workshop-2) [http://ritetag.com/hashtag-academy/hashtag-virality-
measurem...](http://ritetag.com/hashtag-academy/hashtag-virality-measurement-
visualization)

------
ballard
Wow cool!

Would really like to see related tags, built in the usual big data algorithms
/ search UX way.

~~~
maintopbiz
We'll soon release an API if someone wants to play with hashtags ;-)
[http://ritetag.com/rest-api](http://ritetag.com/rest-api)

------
PhasmaFelis
What? I thought this was Hacker News, not Marketing News.

~~~
osakasaul
Actually, hashtags are not just for marketing, nor is RiteTag. People get
plenty done, such as bringing people to #hackforgood or hackathon events,
search for lost children, and more. But without a hashtag grading system, they
really have no idea which hashtags are best for getting discovered.

