Hashtag-a-go-go

CAUTION: This post has a NERD ALERT WARNING

OK, so, for those of you not on twitter, hashtags are a device used on twitter so that people can search for all tweets on a certain topic. They are made by typing the hash symbol (#) and then a word or combination of characters directly afterwards with no spaces. Popular hashtags in Australia include #qanda, for the ABC TV show Q and A, and #spill, the hashtag that developed around the Leadership trouble in the federal Liberal party at the end of 2009. Although there are websites and services that attempt to organise hashtags in some ways, anyone can start or use any hashtag because the only action involved is typing characters into a tweet.

Sometimes a hashtag is prescribed to an event, Q and A being a good example of this; they mention the hashtag at the start of the show each episode. At other times a hashtag will evolve by itself; in the case of the #spill the hashtag came from continued speculation early on that there would be a spill for the leadership positions. Because twitter updates are limited to 140 characters, brevity is at a premium. This is all the more important with hashtags given that a hashtag will often be added on to the end of a tweet rather than worked into tweet itself. It is also useful for a hashtag to be clearly related to what is being discussed, although I would argue that this isn’t an essential ingredient in a useful hashtag.

And now to the topic at hand: the ideal hashtag for the Australian federal election most likely to be held sometime this year. The issue was raised by the ABC Elections account because the tag #election2010 was being swamped by tweets about the UK and US elections also due this year. Also this afternoon Ben Raue set up a poll to get a vibe of what people would prefer and so here I am, writing this blog post on the topic.

There seem to be a few words/chunks that could be put together in a few different ways including
What it is: Election/Vote
When it is: 2010/10
Where it is: Aus/Oz/Fed

Clearly an important consideration here is to what extent the content of the hashtag needs to make clear the subject at hand. If it was something like #Aus10 it would be nice and short but it doesn’t say anything about an election. While a phrase such as “in the red corner is tony abbot and in the blue corner is kevin rudd federal election 2010” (sic) condensed into one hashtag would be ridiculous. In my opinion, hashtags are primarily of use to people already somewhat engaged in the conversation, or who would be familiar with the background to the issue, and therefore it is not necessary to make clear, within a hashtag, exactly what the issue is. Further to that, a hashtag doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it will inevitably be surrounded but other text or a link that will provide a context.

On that basis, I personally believe that including the word Election or Vote in the hashtag for the Australian federal election is not necessary. This has the added benefit of taking out two of the longest chunks that could’ve been included. I also advocate for the abbreviation of the date to just ‘10’ to keep the tag short and to choose Aus over oz and fed; over fed because Aus is specific to Australia and over the shorter oz because i (and a few others) were told off this morning. So ultimately, my preferred hashtag for the next Australian federal election would be #Aus10. Also, as I observed earlier today, this hashtag can be easily modified for the other elections in 2010 e.g. SA10.

However, I’m not dogmatic about this. I’m open to debate and indeed I really think there is no absolute right or wrong answer here, just guiding principals. The one last point I’d make is that, one way or another, I really don’t think there needs to be one chunk out of each of the three categories highlighted before. You could include Vote and the year, or Vote an an indication of the country, but I don’t think you need to specify that it’s an election, in the year 2010 and in Australia, all in the hashtag.

Now over to you, what do you think makes a good hashtag? What would be the best hashtag for the federal election? Or if you want to get all meta on me, is it too nerdy to write a post about a hashtag in the first place?