Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
Tommy Vallier from Kingston, where I lived for almost five months, talks about a great idea of local hashtags to make local tweets even more searchable and relevant:
It’s been hard, though, because while big events have dedicated hashtags, smaller going-ons never do.
Because long hashtags don’t make sense thanks to Twitter’s 140 character limit, and over-general hashtags like #singapore would generate too much noise, Tommy suggested breaking up Kingston the same way Canada Post does, by postal code.
Kingston and Singapore have a lot in common. We’re both very small (although Singapore’s population is something like 45x on the same landmass), and we’re quite easily broken up into zones. The problem with hashtags like #sgtweetup and #smbsg and #openroom is that they can only be found by people who know what they’re looking for. The chance of serendiptous discovery is slim to none.
So what if we added in hyper-local hashtagging? Districts like #amk or #cck are too local (I feel) and too limiting (what’s the hashtag for Simei?). Perhaps the answer is in separating it into 5 parts:
#sgn – north
#sgs – south
#sge – east
#sgw – west
#sgc – central
An extra four characters to keep it short and sweet and easy to add on. Of course this isn’t fullproof (I don’t know where I’d put Sengkang), but if we imagine the rough outline of where the MRT trains go, we could possibly give a close to subjective hashtag to add more relevance to our tweets.
What do the Tweeters in Singapore think? Too troublesome? No one cares about local tweets? Or would it help tell you more about events, traffic, weather, news etc? I want to know what you think.
Tags: #openroom, event hashtags, hyper localisation, hyper localization, kingston ontario, local tweets, mrt trains, singapore #sgtweetup, smbsg, tommy vallier, twitter
Posted in Singapore, community, social media, twitter | 9 Comments »
Friday, September 5th, 2008
I’m in Kingston, Ontario, Canada right now and it’s a very, very different change of scenery from Singapore. The landmass is (obviously) much bigger than Singapore, but yet the population is only roughly 117,000, compared to Singapore’s 4.5million people.
What does this mean? For one, of course the pace of life here is much slower. Eugene and I had a leisurely dinner on the porch of our house watching people walk or cycle by, and that’s just something you’d never see back home in Singapore.
But it also means, for a small city of 117,000, maybe social media isn’t all that necessary. Besides the hotels, motels and bed and breakfasts, I don’t really see many establishments utilising a website or adding themselves to Google Maps, having a blog etcetc. And maybe they don’t need it.
I didn’t know where the comic shops were, but walking down the main street there were already two. And while I’m hunting frantically for furniture, Google isn’t turning up much, but asking the guy at the comic store yielded four different stores just a block away. Same thing when I was finding out where to buy wine, the taxi driver was more helpful than Google. (Canada has a strange rule that doesn’t allow wine to be sold everywhere, so it’s not as easy as walking into a 7-11 or supermarket back home).
All these suggest to me that no one’s bothering with tagging or maintaining any real presence online. Does it make sense for a university town where a simple orientation can be done in half a day and there is little tourism to speak of? I think it does.
Can an establishment in other tourist-heavy cities like Singapore, New York, Tokyo and the like afford not to bother with a presence online? I don’t think so. And tomorrow I’ll give you a great example why.
Tags: bed and breakfast kingston, canada, kingston ontario, kingston population, Singapore, singapore population
Posted in social media | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008
When I read about Podcamp Montreal fromMitch Joel’s blog, I signed up instantly! One of the things I wanted to do while on exchange here in Kingston was to really explore the social media scene and see how different it is from Singapore. What a perfect opportunity!
I’m a little nervous because the official language in Montreal is French (according to Wikipedia) and some of the sessions are held in French, but I’m sure there will be enough English sessions to get by.
It’s happening over the 20th and 21st of September (just three weeks away!) so be prepared to see lots of blogging and Flip videos over that weekend. I just know this is going to be inspiring.
Tags: canadian social media, kingston ontario, mitch joel, montreal, podcamp montreal, social media scene in canada, twist image
Posted in Events, social media | 4 Comments »
